


Goodness Gives Extras

by mydwynter



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: ACD Canon References, Anal Play, Bad Puns, Banter, Case Fic, Christmas, Christmas Presents, Companionable Snark, First Time, Fluff and Angst, Frottage, Humor, Lack of Communication, Love, M/M, Oral Sex, Original Character(s), Rimming, Romance, Snark, Snow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-19
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 04:48:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 39,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1089797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mydwynter/pseuds/mydwynter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Christmas time. 'Tis the season to settle down with a drink, some food and a present or two, and to enjoy the quiet relaxation of the holiday. Instead, there's a case that drags them all over, missing presents, disappointed kids, angry parents, and a freak snowfall.</p>
<p>On top of that John has to deal with Sherlock, who is being even more of a prat than usual.</p>
<p>He really shouldn't have expected anything different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Once, Twice

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to BilliethePoet and Wearitcounts for the prompt and awesome betaness.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christmas time. Tis the season to settle down with a drink, some food and a present or two, and to enjoy the quiet relaxation of the holiday. Instead, there's a case that drags them all over, missing presents, disappointed kids, angry parents, and a freak snowfall.
> 
> On top of that John has to deal with Sherlock, who is being even more of a prat than usual.
> 
> He really shouldn't have expected anything different.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to BilliethePoet and Wearitcounts for the prompt and awesome betaness.

It was fucking cold.

John stomped his feet up the steps to the door of the flat, hoping it would do something to restore circulation. One of these days he'll learn to wear sturdier, thicker shoes if he's going to walk home from the clinic. At the door to #221, he rummaged in his coat pocket for his keys. Then he tried the other pocket. Then he tried the first one. His keys weren't there. He was sure they had been there when he left. He'd used them to lock the door, then put them in his pocket, and they'd been there all day, even when…

Oh. Fucking Sherlock.

No wonder he'd stopped by the clinic in the early afternoon. He hadn’t come to bring John the extra half of his sandwich from lunch. That should have been suspicious behaviour in the first place, but it was nearly Christmas and John was filled with goodwill to all men. Even Sherlock.

Well, he had been until now, when he realised it had just been a ruse to steal his keys.

Standing ramrod straight on the stoop, John phoned him. "Sherlock. Pick up the _bloody_ phone," he muttered.

Just before it went to voicemail, he finally did. "John!"

"Don't sound chipper at me. Where are my damn keys?"

"I have them."

"Yes, I know that, Sherlock. Why do you have them?"

"I needed them."

John counted to five. "May I have them back, please?"

"Of course."

"Now?"

"That depends. Are you out on the front stoop?"

"Yes, Sherlock. I am out on the front stoop. Waiting to get in the house.”

"Back out to the pavement, please."

"No, Sherlock, I will not—"

"Please, John. I don't want to hit you on the head."

"Hit me on the—" Like a star in the east, out of the gloaming came a shimmering, spiky star. It rose high and fell with a hard clink onto the step next to John's foot. "SHERLOCK."

"I did ask you to move."

"Did you just launch the fucking keys out the—No, never mind." He hung up the phone without waiting for Sherlock's response and stabbed the keys into the lock to let himself inside.

There was a curious rustling noise from upstairs as John stomped up the steps, and a thumping and the scrape of furniture, but when he got to their sitting room Sherlock was shutting the window with an innocent expression on his face. It didn’t look as if anything were on fire, so John immediately disregarded the sounds in favour of being cross.

"Sherlock. What the fuck are you on about? Throwing keys at my head in the dark? Stealing them while I'm at work? What—" He stopped dead and had to sit down. "You decorated."

"Just the usual."

Sherlock had somehow recreated the decorations over the mirror which had been up during his only Christmas at 221B, before he…left. John's vision felt a little swimmy. "The usual?"

"Mrs. Hudson had some photographs, and knew where everything was stored. It wasn't nearly as trying as I expected it to be, even with the lights in a ball. I really don't understand how you managed to tangle them so badly last year."

"I didn't…" John buried his face in his hands and tried to breathe. "I didn't use them last year.”

"Oh." John heard Sherlock take a step closer and then stop. "Right." Sherlock coughed awkwardly. "You didn't decorate at all, did you?"

"No, I didn't, Sherlock. Or the year before that."

"Right." Sherlock shifted his feet. "Would you like me to take them down?"

"No, that's…That's fine." John finally lifted his head from his hands and forced a smile. Sherlock twitched back slightly.

"John, don't do that with your face. It's insulting."

John sniffed a laugh and looked away. He didn't want to give in, but this is what it all came round to these days: Sherlock's fucking charm, wielded like a weapon.

The tension softened, Sherlock sat next to John on the sofa. "I'll take them down if you really don't want them there."

"No, Sherlock, they're fine. I promise."

They sat in silence for a few minutes. It had almost become comfortable when John felt the words boiling up. "I can't believe you fucking stole my keys."

"I needed them."

"The sandwich thing was just a ruse?"

“No. Well, not entirely. It’s true I didn't want the rest of it. We usually share them."

"I usually buy one and you nick half, you mean."

"Isn't that what I just said?"

John glanced sideways at Sherlock, his lips pressed tightly together to hide his smile. "Why did you need them?"

"I can't tell you."

"Am I going to break out in a rash from touching them?"

"Unlikely."

"I can't believe you."

"Yes you can."

John blew out a breath. “I’ll try.”

He got up to go make some tea, but stopped when he noticed a pale pink scarf with various colours of blue stripe knitted into it piled in a heap on the shelf next to the entrance to the kitchen. "What's this?" John asked.

"Ah." Sherlock gestured grandiosely at him. "A scarf."

John's eyes nearly rolled from his head. "Yes I got that, Sherlock. What's it doing here?"

"You know my methods. Deduce it."

"Deduce— Sherlock, I'm really not in the mood." Sherlock frowned. John stared at him a few seconds then capitulated. "Okay, fine. It's…okay. Woman's scarf, likely. No tag, so probably hand-made. I'd guess young woman, teenager or twenty years old. Dirty— Sherlock, did you find this on the _ground_?!"

Sherlock looked immensely pleased. "You're doing well, John. Please continue."

"You…" John cast him a look, "found this on the ground. Probably just outside the flat, or you wouldn't have bothered bringing it home. Which…why did you bring this in, Sherlock? She might have come back for it and been sad it was missing. She'd probably think someone stole it."

"No one did steal it. She dropped it."

"So?" John sighed and handed it back. "How did I do?"

"Excellently."

John smiled.

"I mean, you missed all the important things, but apart from that, really excellently, John."

"I despise you."

Sherlock grinned. He stood near the window, where the fading sunlight cast the pink scarf in pinker relief. "See this right here? Grey hair. More than one, so probably belonging to the owner. Likely an older woman. Dirt, yes, from falling to the ground. Not commercially made, no, but made on a loom nonetheless. Larger-scale operation, then, store-bought, but not at a large chain. And the smell—" He put it to his nose and inhaled. "Smells like the sort of perfume women wear to make themselves seem more rich than they actually are. Probably service industry, upper scale. Travel agency, or hotel. No other stains, no pulls, so it's either new or she expends effort not to ruin it. It might mean something to her. This tassel here… John? Where are you going?"

John had given up. He trod heavily up the stairs, stripping off his coat as he went. "I'm too tired for this game, Sherlock. I had a long day, and someone threw keys at me." He dropped the coat on the railing and continued up to his room. "Let me know if you've found Shergar." He imagined he could see the frown on Sherlock's face, and it gave him a bitter thrill of happiness.

In his room, John sighed, mulling over the churn of his stomach then dismissing it. He smelled of antiseptic hand wash and industrial cleaner, as usual. He stripped off his jumper and emptied out his pockets. For the first time in a while he focussed on the container into which he threw his loose change; it was a pint glass he’d won at a work party two Christmases previous, dusty and emblazoned with the name of what he remembered as a loud and cheesy venue. It seemed like a very, very long time ago. He’d been about ten years younger, he thinks, and still reeling from Sherlock being gone.

On the other hand, was it so different now? Time had passed, and Sherlock had been back nearly a year, but sometimes the ache still rose up in John’s throat and invaded his dreams.

John changed into more comfortable clothes and tried to calm down. This was what happened, all the time; Sherlock would needle him, bring all the blood up to the surface, and the smallest bit of irritation would sting. It was as if his life with Sherlock were still marred by a raw nerve that got in the way at unexpected times and made John suddenly furious. He knew all about grief, and knew it was going to take time to be fully healed, but he’d have thought he’d be fine by now. It had been ages, after all. How long was he going to have to wait? What was going to have to happen before he could fully relax again?

* * *

Sherlock was still pouting about the scarf when John wandered back downstairs wearing one of his warmer, more-comfortable jumpers and a pair of thick wooly socks, feeling more able to take on the evening. Now that Sherlock wasn’t sidetracking him with decorations and scarves, he wondered about the strange shifting noise he'd heard when he came in, but he didn’t bother asking: Sherlock was bound to give him some run-round nonsense, and still nothing was smouldering. It wasn’t worth the aggravation.

Ignoring him, John went into the kitchen to throw together something for supper based solely on whatever they had in. He needed to get down to the shops, so it ended up being rice and broccoli and a bit more cheese than was probably good for them, and Sherlock only consented to eat a small bowlful once John also handed him a bottle of hot sauce to go with it.

They'd just settled in to watch some season-inspired rerun of The Supersizers when the doorbell rang. John looked at Sherlock, and Sherlock looked back. Neither moved to answer it. The battle of wills continued until Mrs. Hudson eventually led up Lestrade, who was looking at the both of them from beneath a raised eyebrow.

"Thank you, Mrs. Hudson," he said to her, a smile quirking up the corner of his mouth. She smiled at decorations on the mantle before disappearing downstairs. Lestrade snorted and sat himself at the desk. "What, neither of you could be arsed to answer the door?"

John left that alone. “Want a drink?"

"Oh, now you'll stand up?"

"Sod off," John said, but he chuckled anyway.

He went in to grab something for both himself and Greg, and he heard Sherlock from his seat in the sitting room. "Well?"

"Well, what?" Greg said.

"What's the case?"

"There is no case," Greg said, and John wavered between the Double Chocolate and Pride. "Not for you."

" _What._ "

John grinned and, just for that, brought them both back the former.

"Can't I just stop by and say hello?" Greg said.

"No," said Sherlock.

"Well happy Christmas to you too." Greg clinked his drink with John's and took a sip.

"Why are you _here,_ Lestrade?" Sherlock was working himself into a strop, and John was entertained to see it.

“Christmas, you prat. Although actually…" Greg leaned back in his chair in an overly-casual manner. Sherlock immediately sat to attention. "There was something weird two days ago. Not my case, though."

"What?" If Sherlock leaned any more forward, John thought he might spill out of his chair.

"What, are you that bored?" John asked.

"Shh," Sherlock hushed him. "Lestrade?"

"John, do you have any crisps in?"

Sherlock growled.

"Fine, fine." Lestrade chuckled. "You are so easy to wind up today. What's the matter with you?"

"Nothing."

"He's out of sorts because I wouldn't play his deduction game earlier."

"That's not why."

"It's entirely why," John said, handing Lestrade the last of the crisps.

"Lestrade, do you have something of substance to add to this conversation?"

Lestrade cleared his throat. "Ah, right. The case. It's a little weird."

"Sherlock likes weird."

Sherlock shushed him again.

Lestrade grinned. "So two days ago, a woman gets home from work to find that her home has been burgled. Someone has broke in and stolen—get this—just the kids' Christmas presents. Nothing else. Not the telly, or the opened Xbox, or the jewellery on her nightstand. Nothing."

Sherlock's brow was furrowed. "Had they been wrapped?"

"Yes."

"All of them?"

"Most of them, yeah."

"The ones that were taken?"

"As far as I know, yeah, but I'm not sure. Not my case, remember."

"Hmm." Sherlock sat back and steepled his fingers. "Interesting."

"Weird, right? I thought you'd enjoy that."

Sherlock stood up and swung his coat on.

"Where are you going?" John asked.

"Well, let's go," Sherlock said to Lestrade, who blinked up at him.

"Go? Go where?"

"To the Yard. I need to see the evidence."

"Sherlo— No. This isn't my case."

"They need my help."

"No, I don't think they do."

"Why did they send you over to me, then?"

Lestrade blinked at him again and scrubbed his hand over his eyes. "Sherlock, nobody sent me over. I came over to… Well, here." He dug into his coat’s pockets and came out with two small, brightly-wrapped parcels. "Happy Christmas. Might as well have them now. I was gonna just leave them here when I went, but…" He shrugged. "Didn't want a fuss."

John was touched. "Greg, thank you. That was…thanks. Here." He ran to grab Greg's gift from the stash up in his room. He came back down just in time to see Sherlock in his chair, flipping through a book on serial killers, his coat still on.

"I don't have this one."

"I know," Lestrade said with a cheeky grin. "You do now."

Sherlock gave him a strange look. "Thank you. I'm afraid I don't—"

"Yes you do," John said. He handed Lestrade his gift. "From both of us." He ignored Sherlock's assessing stare.

Lestrade opened up the wrapping to reveal a watch. "What the—"

"It's a Dick Tracy watch. You know, like in the—"

"Comic." Lestrade cracked up. "Excellent."

"I know it's a little silly, but I thought you might be entertained."

"Are you kidding? I love it. It'll drive Mycroft _spare_."

"Oh ugh," Sherlock piped up.

"Hush," John said, and clapped Lestrade on the shoulder. "Happy Christmas."

"Thanks. Oh!" Lestrade handed the other parcel to John. "For you."

John smiled and opened it up to reveal a Richard Castle novel. "Oh, this is terrific. Thanks, Greg."

“You seem to have read all the Grisham and Patterson and Clancy I saw, so I figured this might be something new.”

“For christ’s sake,” said Sherlock.

"It's not for you," John said. Sherlock crossed his arms and started to pout. John wondered what had crawled into his knickers and died; he was being even more of an annoying dick than usual.

"Anyway," Lestrade said, and braced his hands on his knees as he pushed up from the chair. "I really just came by here to drop those off. I need to get home and make supper." He upended his drink and handed John the torn wrapping from his gift. "Thanks again."

"No wait," Sherlock said, and he stood. "I need to know more about that case."

"Maybe tomorrow," said Lestrade, and he gave John a cheeky grin. "I've got some more gifts to give tonight." He winked.

John grinned at him. "Go get him, Santa."

Sherlock made a disgusted noise and threw himself back down into his chair. "You're both revolting."

"And a very Happy Christmas to you too," Lestrade said, and he trotted down the stairs with a skip in his step. John heard him wish Mrs. Hudson the delights of the season before the bottom door slammed shut.

John had just about decided to waste his breath on giving Sherlock a talk about thankfulness when Mrs. Hudson came back up.

"That was nice of him, coming back and giving you two presents. What did you get, let me see…"

"Books. Sherlock got…something about serial killers, and he got me a murder mystery.”

"Oh, Sherlock, do you have that one? Those both sound right up your street.”

“They are.” The spirit of goodwill was back, and John gave her a one-armed hug just for being there. She hugged him back then patted him on the chest. "I'll be saving mine for you until Christmas, just to be proper. You two will be here, yes?"

"I will be," John said. He looked at Sherlock.

"Yes, yes," said Sherlock, still grumping.

Undeterred, John turned to Mrs. Hudson with a smile. "See? We can have a do. The three of us."

She seemed _delighted_ at the thought. "I'll put together a little something for us to eat, and we can open presents, and maybe Sherlock will play something for us. Doesn't that sound nice?" She looked at Sherlock, received a complete lack of response, shrugged, and smiled at John. "What's happened?"

"I have no idea," John said, and walked her out, preparing to lock the house and get ready for bed. If Sherlock was going to be in this sort of mood, he'd rather go upstairs and read before sleep instead of sitting down here and subjecting himself to Sherlock's sulk.

But when she was gone, Sherlock shifted in his chair, curling his legs up into his coat and looking so goddamn miserable that John sat back down to see if he could suss out what the hell was going on.

"Sherlock. Sherlock, look at me. What’s happened?"

"You know perfectly well."

"I really don't."

Sherlock rolled over to look at him. "Why wouldn't you finish deducing the scarf?"

"Ah-HA. I knew that's what was wrong."

"Why wouldn't you?"

"Because, Sherlock. You only do that so I can get everything wrong and you can feel superior. Sometimes I'm not really feeling up for that sort of game."

"It's not a game."

"It is when you're trying to decide which of us will win."

Sherlock's brow furrowed. "That's not what's going on."

"Then what? What's going on, Sherlock." John crossed his arms over his chest.

"I like…" Sherlock cleared his throat, that particular sound that heralded him saying something that made him uncomfortable. "I like to share that with you."

John blinked and let out a derisive laugh. "You like to _share_ it with me?"

"Yes." Sherlock stared at a spot on the far wall.

"You like to share…deduction with me."

"Yes."

John scanned him, his brow furrowed. "Sherlock, all you do is watch me do it poorly, and are visibly pleased when I've done it wrong. And frankly, I'm sick of it."

Sherlock's adam's apple bobbed.

"I'm not an idiot. And…god, I can't believe I forgot while you were…gone…how much you made me feel like one." John's heart was racing all out of proportion, and he forced himself to take a calming breath and blow it out from between pursed lips. "Anyway, I'm finished with it. From now on, you make the deductions and I'll just…I don't know…be the backup. The man with the gun. I'm through being thought of as stupid." He found himself staring at the soft white glow from the fairy lights on the mantel, at the way they haloed Sherlock's hair, and he shifted his stance. When it was clear Sherlock wasn't going to respond John turned on his heel to put their dishes in the sink. The washing up could happen in the morning.

When he walked through to the staircase, Sherlock spoke. "It's not to make you feel like an idiot, John."

John stopped still, and his head dropped. "Well, it makes me feel like one," he said, and he went up the stairs to his room.

* * *

John was eating his lunch and absently scanning the paper: gold prices were wavering. There’d been a theft at a ritzy hotel. There would be a Christmas parade the next morning. He was so lost in skimming that he jumped when the doorbell rang. He set down his spoon to see who it was, but before he could even rise from the chair Sherlock had finally emerged from his room and was bounding down the stairs like an overexcited schoolchild.

"Peterson," he heard Sherlock say at the bottom of the stairs, and he heard two sets of feet coming back up. "A burglary, I expect? Interesting. Good enough to deign to speak with me?"

"Oh, don't give me that ‘said the spider to the fly' crap," Peterson said. They both entered the sitting room, and John abandoned his breakfast to see who it was. His face was vaguely familiar, and slightly reminiscent of a Basset Hound’s, but he seemed friendly enough when he reached out a hand toward John. "Inspector Peterson."

"Not a murder?" John asked, shaking his gloved hand. The leather was still cold from outside.

"Not my area," Peterson said. "I don't usually get cases I'm stumped on, but this one…" He pointed a finger at Sherlock. "This one is for you."

"Tell me," Sherlock said. He lowered himself into his chair and steepled his hands in front of his mouth.

"Tea?" John asked them both. Sherlock ignored him, all his attention focused on Peterson. John assumed he wanted tea anyway.

But Peterson shook his head. “No, thank you," he said, and sat down in John's chair as if he owned it. Behind him, John frowned. He could see Sherlock trying not to smile; anyone else would have missed it, but the signs were clear as crystal to John. Feeling suddenly a bit grouchy, John started the water for his and Sherlock's tea.

"Begin," Sherlock commanded.

Peterson cleared his throat. " _Begin_ ," he said, a clear mimic of Sherlock's voice. Sherlock frowned this time, and John’s short-lived grouchiness transformed into amusement. He crossed his arms across his chest and leaned against the door jamb in between the kitchen and the sitting room, trying not to laugh. He passed his hand in front of his mouth to hide it. Sherlock’s eyes flicked up to the movement, caught him, and he frowned so hard he looked like a caricature. John checked on the water.

“So here’s the deal. There was a break-in three days ago now. Residence. Thief tossed the house, but only nicked wrapped Christmas presents from where they were hid in the master bedroom.” John expected Sherlock in his impatience to interrupt and say they’d heard this already, but he said nothing. “There were valuables all round, since they seem to have a bit of money, and there were plenty of unwrapped toys about, but the thief only took wrapped and hidden ones.”

He’d stopped, so Sherlock prompted him. “But there’s been another.”

“This morning. Guy came home on his lunch break to find that somewhere between when he and his wife and his kids had gone for the day, someone had broke in and stole the presents from underneath their tree.”

“Christ,” John said. The poor kids.

“All of them?”

“Not all, no,” Peterson said. “Only certain ones, like last time.”

“Wait.” Sherlock sat forward. “Only specific presents?”

“Yeah. Not all the gifts were taken. Some, the thief left there. I’d figured he didn’t have a lot of room in his bag or something. Like a reverse St. Nicolas.”

“And which presents did he take?”

Peterson blinked. “Which did he— Oh. Yeah, I have a list.” He dug around in the inner pocket of his jacket and came out with two sheets of paper. “They’re both there, last time and this one.” He handed them to John, who shuttled them four feet to Sherlock like their postal carrier.

“You haven’t cross-matched them yet?” Sherlock asked, incredulous.

“No, I’m an idiot,” Peterson said. Sherlock blinked at him. Peterson rolled his eyes. “There are two gifts that appear across both lists. One is a that Tamarind Spy book that everyone and their aunt has been going on about, and the other is the giant version of those goth dolls the girls are going mad for these days. Apparently this one is rare. Principessa Puddleglum or some such bollocks—no, it’s called Freakenstein Fran. There have been massive queues in the shops for this one in particular.”

“Do you think they’re trying to sell them?” John asked.

“I think so,” said Peterson. “Guy figures out who bought the dolls, goes round when they’re out, steals them, and sells them off the books for a pretty penny. It’s a neat trick. We just need to figure out who’s doing it.”

Sherlock had stood and was sweeping on his coat. “Well. Let’s go.”

“Where’s that?” John grabbed his own coat from the bannister.

“Obvious. We’re going to ask the victims exactly where they bought those dolls.”

* * *

Sherlock refused to take Peterson’s car, so they rode over in a cab separately. John stared out the window at the cold, flat, winter-grey world as it whizzed past, and tried to ignore the tension between them. He wondered if he’d been forgiven for the scarf argument.

“If I gave you something to deduce, and didn’t correct you, would you prefer it?” Sherlock said.

And there was the answer to that question. “What? No. I don’t… No. That would be pointless.”

“I’d just like to know how best I can ask you to deduce something without.” He cleared his throat. “Without making you feel like an idiot.”

John blinked out the window. “I don’t… I have no idea, Sherlock. It’s not one of those things I can predict. I mean, don’t call me an idiot?”

“I don’t call you an idiot.”

“You’re always calling me an idiot,” John said, as he swung around to look at Sherlock. The tension broke into quiet laughter. John watched Sherlock look out his window. The bob of his adam’s apple was clear in profile.

“I was being serious last night.”

“About?”

“I do like to share it with you.”

John continued to stare at Sherlock’s profile. There was that raw nerve again. John had almost forgotten what it had been like not to have this sort of strange, unsettling tension weaving its way around them at the oddest moments. He felt it settling in his stomach, a dense ball of energy pulling all his organs as if it had its own gravity, sending out flashes of lightning into his fingers and his toes. He felt it electrify the air inside the cab, and John half expected the cabbie to look in the mirror at the two of them and ask what they hell they were up to back there.

He was acutely aware of the shift of Sherlock’s body as he leaned his shoulder against the window and took out his phone.

“Did you think of something?” John asked.

“Hm?”

“Did you have an idea about the case?”

“I don’t know anything about the dolls. Or the book.”

“Really?”

Sherlock tore his gaze away from his phone just long enough to shoot John a look from under a raised eyebrow, then went back to his flurry of thumbs.

“Right. Of course not. It’s only been all over the telly and the magazines for weeks. Two of the most popular toys this holiday season.”

“So it’s not out of the ordinary to find them in the group of stolen presents.”

“I don’t think so, no.”

“Hm.” Sherlock continued to research, and John propped his head up to stare out the window again for the rest of the ride.

* * *

The Levingers’ house was large and clean and looked like it had been featured in a magazine. John supposed it might have been. If their children played with toys, there was no sign of it; the sitting room was all spotless white rug and smooth beige upholstery and not a game or book in sight.

They sat in the gigantic black granite kitchen and drank tea and listened to Janet Levinger’s bitter description of the burglary.

“I don’t know who would do such a thing. Before Christmas. Stealing presents. It’s a horrible thing to do,” she said, her already-pinched face tightening, and John made sympathetic noises. “I suppose we’ll have to go out and buy all new things, but I tell you. Ginny was so awfully looking forward to that Fran doll. It will be tough to find another one at this late date.” She heaved a sigh. John marvelled that she seemed less perturbed at the expense than the hassle. Then again, looking around the size of the house, possibly that shouldn’t be much of a surprise. “You will catch the criminal who did this, right? I told Jimmy I saw someone skulking around the bins last week, but he wouldn’t believe me.”

“I promise, we’re doing all we can,” Peterson said.

“You’d better be. Candice Pitt is in my book club, and I wouldn’t want to have to—“

“I promise,” Peterson said again, and patted her hand. John was already irritated with the woman, and she’d only just name-dropped the wife of the Superintendent. If she did it a second time, he might lose patience with her—unlike Sherlock, who was being strangely, worryingly calm. John looked at him from the corner of his eye: Sherlock was giving her his best “shamming normality” expression, the version that looked like placid understanding. John forced himself to take a turn about the room instead of rolling his eyes.

“Could you tell me where you bought the items that were stolen, Mrs. Levinger?”

“Erm, sure I guess. If you think it will help you catch the man. You’ll make sure you do, right? Ellie over the road had someone break into her garage, but the police never—“

“I have an interest in this case, Mrs. Levinger,” Sherlock said. “I will solve it for you.”

John looked just in time to see her bat her eyelashes at him. This time, John did turn his back and roll his eyes. Figured. Everyone fancied Sherlock. If Sherlock been of the persuasion to care about…any of that, he could have had anybody. Unlike John, who had started out with something like a 50% average and whose stats seemed to be getting worse the more he hung round Sherlock. Jealousy burned in his stomach.

Mrs. Levinger wrote out a list of where she’d bought each present, and then they were on their way to interview Mr. Ahlcrona, who had told Peterson he couldn’t possibly get away from work.

“I need to finish up with a client before Christmas,” he explained, leading them into the break room of the small software company he managed. “What can I do for you?”

Peterson answered. “We were— We were wondering…” The radio in the corner was playing some cacophonous version of Carol of the Bells, and it looked like the sound of it was causing Peterson’s brain to stutter to a halt. “Look, can we turn this off?” Before waiting for a response he leaned over and flicked off the sound. Sherlock’s shoulders relaxed, and John wondered why Sherlock hadn’t said anything if the sound had been bothering him so much. To be so diplomatic was immensely out of character. Peterson went on. “We would like you to write down for us where you purchased each present that was stolen. Can you do that for us?”

While Peterson was corralling Ahlcrona’s attention, John’s gaze fell upon the paper strewn across the break room table. He skimmed past the article from that morning about the parade and a write-up about a famous gemstone to focus on another headline. “Sherlock. Look.” He pointed to a tiny mention, three column inches in a sidebar about a robbery that took place two nights ago over in Wolverhampton. The thief had only taken presents and no other valuables of any kind. Sherlock read the article and pulled out his phone to begin researching, then walked straight out the door without saying a word. Peterson blinked after him.

“Here,” John said, and handed him the article. “You’ll…er.” He looked through the door at Sherlock’s back, then back at Peterson, torn. “Listen, you’ll text me the list of shops, right? Or text him.” He glanced back to Sherlock again. He was already at the lifts. “Get the number from Greg if you don’t have it… Mr. Ahlcrona, it was nice to…er… Thanks.” John sped out the door and straight onto the lift before the doors closed.

“What the hell, Sherlock.” Sherlock ignored him. John sighed. “Well, are you going to share what’s going on?”

“Thank you, John.”

“No, I’m not— No, Sherlock, I’m not asking to be thanked, I’m asking for you to tell me what the hell is happening. That’s clearly the same robber, right? Are we going to Wolverhampton now?”

“Obviously.”

“Peterson didn’t know about it because it was in a different jurisdiction.”

Sherlock lifted his gaze from his mobile just long enough to blink at John in disbelief and then went back to doing whatever the hell he was doing.

“Right.” John folded his arms and leaned against the wall. “Right.”


	2. Wolverhampton

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To say that the b&b was all decked out for the holidays would be an understatement. They stood transfixed, staring with a mix of awe and horror at the display adorning the house. It looked as if a power station had been sick all over the roof, the hedge, and the garden, and all together they flashed and flickered and glowed in a vomitous mix of colours sent into the dark. There was a light-up reindeer on the roof, and an inflatable St. Nick bobbing and waving from the side of the walk. Somewhere there was a speaker hidden, and it was playing a very sincerely-felt arrangement of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen for the harp and piano.
> 
> John almost turned round and headed back to the pub, quiz be damned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to HiddenLacuna, BilliethePoet, Wearitcounts, and Mazarin221B for stepping in with betaing and feedback and helping me make this so very much smoother than it was. It's tremendously appreciated.

On the train to Wolverhampton, Sherlock sat silently but not quietly, his fingers twitching in his impatience to get to the scene of the crime.

John tried his line of questioning again. “Sherlock, don’t you think it would be better to warn the police that we’re coming? The Met asked us to help. Wolverhampton—West Midlands?—they didn’t.”

Sherlock ignored him.

“Sherlock, we can’t just bust in on their investigation and start asking questions.”

Sherlock turned further from John and his fingers played out a rhythm on the seat.

“Sherlock—“

“John, do shut up. I’m thinking.”

Pinching between his eyes, John sighed. “Yes, but I don’t know _what_ you’re thinking. It could be about what type of…Quavers you like best, for all I know. We don’t have enough data for this case for you to be thinking about it.”

Slowly, Sherlock turned in his seat to look at John, interest sparkling in his eyes. “Do we not? Tell me.”

John’s noise of frustration was louder this time. “Tell you _what_?”

“List for me the data we have on this case.”

John blinked at him. “Seriously?”

“Yes.”

“What, you’re testing me now?”

“Not testing.”

“This is like the scarf thing all over again.” John stood. “I told you I don’t want to play. You want to be mysterious with your deductions, fine, but don’t make me seem like a dolt just so you can feel superior.” He stood.

“John. John, where are you going?”

“I’m getting a tea, you arse.”

“For me?”

“If you want one, get your own.”

* * *

John’s drink had barely a chance to scald his hand through his cup before Sherlock strode into the shop behind him. They exchanged quiet looks, and John waited for Sherlock to get his tea before walking back to their seats. Neither of them said a word until John’s was nearly gone.

“I genuinely wanted to know, John.”

“No you didn’t.”

“I was curious what was obvious to an outside observer, but that doesn’t mean—“

“That’s just it though, isn’t it? I’m _not_ an outside observer, Sherlock. I’m supposed to be—“ John made his bovine noise of frustration. “You’ve learned _nothing_. Not a thing.”

“John…”

“No, look. You left. You left me, you didn’t trust me, you didn’t _tell me_ anything, you just left, and I think I’ve been pretty understanding. But you’ve been back nearly a year and it’s clear you haven’t learned a damn thing.”

“John…”

“You never let me in, Sherlock. You came round again with all that talk about banding together against the world but it was just lies, wasn’t it? You still never stop to even _consider_ letting me in. It’s all this ‘I’m thinking, John’ and ‘why don’t you tell me what you’re thinking so I can mock it, John’ and ‘you’re just as idiotic as everyone else, John’.” He swallowed. “_ Everyone else_ Sherlock? I’m supposed to be your friend, your _partner_ in this…whatever it is, but you hold your cards just as close to your chest as you always have and you lump me in with everyone else when you unveil it like some goddamn stage magician. I’m fed up with it. We’re supposed to be _together_ on this, and I’m beginning to realise I don’t think you know what the fuck that _means_.”

Sherlock sat back against his seat, trailing his thumb along the seam on the lip of his empty cup. “John, I…” He fell silent.

John downed the rest of his tea and held out his hand for Sherlock’s cup. “You’re done?” Sherlock handed it over and tucked his hands neatly in his lap to stare out the window again. Assuming that was going to be all the reaction he was going to get, John went to bin their rubbish.

When he got back, he settled down in his seat with the magazine he’d snagged at Euston. Sherlock turned to face him.

“This is…This is not something I…I’m good at, John. I make an effort, but it’s not something that I have a lot of experience with. You’re the only one I’ve… Even when I was young, I didn’t…”

“Well, you’re going to have to try harder.”

Sherlock looked down at his hands, nodded his head once, and let the conversation lie dormant.

* * *

Mrs. Waverly was surprised to hear that a pair of investigators out of London were interested in hearing about her case.

“It was weird,” she said, rolling a child’s bicycle to the side of the drive before pulling her car in. “I would have figured they’d have took my iPad or my wife’s Xbox, but they didn’t.” She swallowed hard and interrupted the conversation while she parked. John looked round and tried to will himself warmer. Unlike the two victims from earlier, this family didn’t appear to be rolling in money, and he figured the loss would hit them particularly hard. He felt terrible for their kids.

“Come on in then, it’s cold enough to snow out here,” she said, pulling her briefcase out from the front seat. “I’ll tell you about what happened.”

It had been a normal day, as far as Mrs. Waverly (“Gina, please.”) was concerned. She had gone off to work at the normal time, and her wife Tori had shuttled their three kids to school and child care before going to her own job. When Gina had gotten back that evening she’d noticed that someone had broken in. She called Tori and told her to keep the kids away while the police were starting their investigation because she didn’t want to worry the eldest two.

The police did what Gina supposed they usually did, dusting for prints and going over the house, but they told her it was extremely unlikely anything would come of it. “I don’t know if it’s because we’re not…you know…posh, or because Tori and I are together, or if the police just don’t take burglaries very seriously anymore.”

She bit her thumbnail. “I’ll tell you what, though. It’s bizarre the thief only took took some of the wrapped presents, and left the valuables alone. Doesn’t that seem weird?”

“That’s why we’re here,” John said.

“I need you to give me a list of what was stolen, as well as where it came from,” said Sherlock.

“Oh, right,” Gina said. She looked around for something to write on and with, and came up with a bit of drawing paper and a pencil. “I might need Tori to help me make sure the list is right. She bought some and I bought some, and she was the one who wrote up the list for the police.”

“That’s fine,” John said. He cast a glance at Sherlock, who was pacing around the kitchen looking at the children’s art on the fridge and the scattered detritus of a life with young ones.

Sherlock turned round. “And I’ll also need to know what wasn’t taken, and where that lot came from.”

Gina phoned her wife, and while they were talking John went to stand next to Sherlock.

“The things that weren’t taken?” John said quietly. They faced away from her, staring at some drawing of a thing that might have been a dog.

“I’ve been an idiot. The thief clearly only wants some things and not others, so why those? I don’t have to create a picture using negative space. She can give me the whole thing.”

“You don’t think it’s the goth doll?”

“We don’t know Gina and Tori bought one.”

“That’s…that’s true.”

“Besides which, there are easier ways to steal and fence a toy than to burglarise three houses and steal gifts.”

“So what do you think is going on here?”

Sherlock tucked his hands behind him. “I have no idea.”

John peered at his back. He couldn’t tell if Sherlock was genuinely stymied or if he was being obtuse on purpose, and so he didn’t know whether to be concerned or annoyed. In light of their conversation on the train the latter would be even more aggravating than usual. John gave himself a few moments to cool down and use the toilet while Gina was on the phone, and when he came back Sherlock was poring over the list.

“What size are these dolls?” Sherlock said, pointing to the list.

Gina looked over his shoulder. “I guess, er, Barbie-sized?”

“And this?

“Iron Man? It’s a mask. So…” Gina made a gesture that seemed to indicate, ‘work it out yourself.’

Sherlock scowled and examined the list again. Then he shoved it into his pocket and stood, looking around imperiously as if deciding where in his domain he’d like to start. “Show me where they were kept,” he said.

* * *

After about an hour of intense scrutiny Sherlock declared to John that there was nothing more they could do.

“We’ll have to see what the other crime scenes looked like,” he said. He turned to Gina at the front door. “Your contact at the police, Statham. Has he called about the results of the fingerprinting?”

“N-no, not yet. I figured what with the holiday things we were going to… Wait. How did you know who—“

Sherlock waved her amazement away with a flick of his fingers. “His card was on your notice board in the kitchen. Obvious.”

“Oh.” Gina looked at John, who shrugged. “Obvious.”

At the door, they nearly ran into another woman carrying a sleeping infant over her shoulder. She was leading a boy and a girl, who each looked about five.

“You must be Tori,” Sherlock said, turning on the charm.

But she seemed immune. “Who is this?” she asked Gina, who was leaning out the door to watch them leave.

“They’re helping the police.”

“Are they going to get back our, erm…” Tori’s eyes were wide with worry as she looked down at her kids and then up at Sherlock. “What was taken?”

“We’ll try,” John said. He wanted to hug her. “I promise you, we’ll try.”

“This close to Christmas, I just… I’m not sure what we’re going to—“

“Come on, babe.” Gina took the napping infant off her wife and kissed her on the hair. “They said they’ll do their best. No use fretting at them. We can call my parents tonight.”

“I don’t want to rely on them,” Tori was saying as she led the two older children into the house.

“Don’t worry about it,” Gina assured Sherlock and John. “We’ll survive. Just, do your best, okay?” She gave them a smile which John was sure was meant to convey strength and the good-old-English stiff-upper-lip, but mostly just looked wobbly and concerned.

John once again had to stifle himself from giving her a hug. It had to be a horrible feeling, having spent the Christmas money and then not having much to show for it. “We will. Of course we will.”

* * *

By the time the cab to the train station pulled up, John was freezing his arse off.

“We should have called for one before we left,” John gritted out through chattering teeth as he slid in behind Sherlock. The enveloping warmth of the cab was a welcome relief.

“I thought you had.”

“I didn’t know we were going to be leaving immediately, Sherlock.”

“I want to catch the next train back to London.”

“Small chance of that,” the cab driver said. He looked in the rearview mirror at the two of them. Sherlock’s hands fell silent on his mobile. “What, you hadn’t heard? There are massive delays. Ice on the line. There’s even talk of snow.”

In a flash, Sherlock was back to typing away at his phone. John shook his head. “No, that can’t be. It was fine this afternoon.”

“Yeah, but the temperature has dropped, right? It’s only bound to get colder once the sun goes. I’m telling you, you want to get back to London tonight, you’re going to have to take your chances some other way. No trains right now until they get things straightened out.”

“No no no no no…” Sherlock was murmuring under his breath, stabbing now at the phone with his spider-like thumbs.

“But. We really have to get back.”

“You can hire someone to drive you, find a coach, or you can stick it out, take your chances…”

John hit his head against the window in frustration.

“Oi!” said the driver. “Not my fault.”

“Listen,” John said, turning his head back toward Sherlock to confer with him in relative privacy. He lowered his voice to a murmur. “Why don’t we stay here, find dinner and a place to kip. We can talk through the case, go over the lists, make some calls, and hope for the best in the morning?”

“There aren’t any rooms,” Sherlock said.

“Huh?”

“I’m looking right now. There aren’t any vacancies, probably because of— Ah. Yes.” Sherlock read out an address to the driver, then turned to John. “I assume you want to eat?”

“God, yes.”

“Are there any pubs near?” Sherlock asked the driver.

“As a matter of fact.” The driver swung right and John had to fight not to land in Sherlock’s lap. “It’s only a couple of streets away from that address you…gave… Wait, is that the b&b?” Sherlock said yes, and the driver snorted. “Good luck with that one.”

“Why?” John asked suddenly suspicious why this b&b, of all others, had a vacancy.

“Tiniest damn rooms I ever did see. Had a friend from out of town look into staying there, said there was barely room for the bed. Hardly space to move around in otherwise.”

“Great.” John rolled his eyes.

“We can try our chances with the train,” Sherlock said. “In fact, I’d rather.”

“No,” said John. He sighed heavily. “I’m starved. And I’m cold. And if I have to sit around the station for the night with you getting more and more shirty with the platform workers, I will lose it by morning.”

“Fine.” Sherlock frowned as he typed furiously, likely reserving the room before it disappeared. 

“You’ll like this pub,” the driver offered. “Good ale. And they’re doing Christmas quiz every day this week.” He said it as if it were a factor in its favour. John pinched Sherlock’s leg preemptively.

Sherlock jolted. “Ow! I wasn’t—“

“Sorry,” John said, and gave him a pointed look. “My foot slipped.”

Sherlock subsided back into his pout. John, for his part, wasn’t looking forward to this in the slightest either, quiz aside. He didn’t have a toothbrush nor a change of clothes, and he strongly suspected he was going to have to fight Sherlock to get some food down him. This was going to be an unbearable night.

* * *

The pub was raucous and sweaty, and John just wanted to eat and get out of there. Sherlock looked as though he were putting on a brave front for John’s benefit, his spine rod-straight and the tails of his coat swept neatly under the chair so they wouldn’t be stepped on.

John tore into his burger with the enthusiasm born of an upcoming quiz he wanted to avoid, and Sherlock picked at his shepherd’s pie. After a while, he realised Sherlock was staring at him. “Wha?” he said, his mouth full.

Sherlock smiled at him—a creepy thing, one of his false ones. “Nothing. I just wanted to look.”

John blinked. “Er, I’m trying to eat.”

“Yes.” Sherlock tilted his head. If it weren’t so dark in the corner into which they’d tucked themselves, John would have sworn Sherlock was swooning.

“What exactly are you trying to deduce?” John said, taking a bite.

“Can’t I just be looking?”

“No.”

Sherlock planted his elbow on the table and propped his cheek in his hand. He looked like a teenage girl. John wondered if there had been some sort of body-swapping pathogen on the seat in the cab. It was like being in a science fiction film. “How is your burger?”

“…Fine.”

“Would you like pudding?”

“Sherlock, I’ve not finished my food yet.”

“Maybe they’re doing something Christmassy. Something with _creme_.”

“Sherlock.” John furrowed his brow and blinked and tried to wrap his brain around exactly what was happening here. “I’d like to finish my meal.”

“Of course, John.” Sherlock picked up his fork again and began to eat, placing each bite in his mouth, biting down with his teeth showing, and then pulling the fork away. He stared at John the whole time.

Determined not to let Sherlock win whatever game he’d decided they were playing, John averted his gaze and stared instead at the beat-up silver and red garland stuck up around the darts board. He schooled his expression to look bored and ate a few chips.

Across from him, he just barely heard the huff of Sherlock’s exasperation over the sound of the revelers. What the hell was he trying to do? Out the corner of his eye he saw the movement of Sherlock shoulders slump and felt the thrill of victory. He took a sip of his beer and toasted himself.

Sherlock stirred his shepherd’s pie into a mess. John worked on his burger.

“Would you like to stay for the quiz? You could, you know—we can. Stay. For the quiz.”

John stared across the table at him, his fork slowly descending to the tabletop. Sherlock’s eyes were huge and innocent and so fake John felt a bubble of hilarity forming somewhere behind his sternum. “I beg your pardon?”

“We should do whatever you want to do, John.”

For a moment, John was speechless. Then he burst into laughter. Sherlock’s face curdled. John tried to start his sentence about five times but each time was caught by a stuttering giggle. Finally it eased enough for him to speak. “Okay. Okay. I g-give up. What’s going on?”

Sherlock was stony-faced. “Nothing’s ‘going on’, John.”

“Bullshit. What are you trying to do?” John scrubbed his hand over his face and took a deep breath. It felt good. He wasn’t sure he’d laughed that hard in ages.

“I’m not ‘trying to do’, anything. I wanted you to have a nice evening.”

“By waiting for me to eat pudding and saying we can stay for a bloody Christmas quiz?! No. No, you’re either trying to get me to do something or say something or miss the existence of something.” John stared round at their surroundings, taking in everything. “What is it? Is one of my exes here?”

Sherlock’s cardboard expression folded inward with displeasure. “No. Thank god.”

John snorted. “Well, on that we agree.” He looked around again. “Seriously, what?”

“Nothing, John.” Sherlock plucked up his fork again and applied himself to his food, eating the mess he’d made in as pissy a way as possible.

John shrugged and finished his burger. As he did so, a curl of fear began deep in the pit of his stomach, growing and filling his gut with nerves the more he thought about Sherlock’s behaviour. He had almost seemed to be flirting. An awkward, sitcom-style flavour of flirtation, sure, as if he’d seen it on the telly and was trying it on, but…yes. Sherlock was doing all the things associated with flirting; eye-contact, smiling, offering to do something with them, horrible innuendo… It wasn’t going to work for several reasons, not the least of which was that John could see through such a clumsy attempt on Sherlock’s part to the manipulation beneath, but left the question: what was the point to it? Why flirt in the first place? What did Sherlock hope to gain?

The fear in John’s stomach solidified into something tangible when he wondered whether it was in reaction to something John had said, did, or thought. It had been years since he’d managed to finally sublimate the attraction he’d felt for Sherlock down to undetectable levels; days would pass and he wouldn’t even think of it at all. Certainly Sherlock had never seemed to notice before. Was the mask finally slipping? Had he betrayed himself at last? Or was it simply that his general affection for Sherlock and his relief that Sherlock returned to him—all the parts of him, even the ones that drove him round the twist—were all combining to create a signal too strong to hide?

Suddenly, John’s appetite was gone. He pushed a few chips around his plate but couldn’t stomach the thought of finishing. He glanced over to Sherlock, who was woolgathering pretty intently with his fork motionless in his slop of over-stirred shepherd’s pie. “Hey,” John said. Sherlock looked at him. “I’m finished.” Sherlock twitched, and his brow furrowed. John elaborated. “With my meal. Can we go?”

Sherlock blinked and stood and swept his coat on. “I’ll be outside,” he said, and abandoned John to deal with the bill. Typical. Hopefully he wasn’t off to have a sneaky cigarette. John stared down at the remains of their meal and sighed. Around him, the pub was starting to erupt with the chaos of the Christmas quiz, and as the quizmaster started his announcements John called over a member of the waitstaff. It really was time to go.

* * *

The b&b was only about a quarter mile from the pub according to Sherlock’s mobile, so in spite of the drop in temperature they decided to walk. There was silence between them—thoughtful, but not necessarily awkward, and John found himself sneaking peeks at Sherlock’s profile as they stepped along. _What, exactly, was going on?_

He was so sidetracked that he nearly walked straight into Sherlock’s back. He heard a sharp intake of breath and spun to stand next to him, braced shoulder-by-shoulder against the sight before them.

“Please tell me this isn’t where we’re staying,” John said. Sherlock’s silence was telling.

To say that the b&b was all decked out for the holidays would be an understatement. They stood transfixed, staring with a mix of awe and horror at the display adorning the house. It looked as if a power station had been sick all over the roof, the hedge, and the garden, and all together they flashed and flickered and glowed in a vomitous mix of colours sent into the dark. There was a light-up reindeer on the roof, and an inflatable St. Nick bobbing and waving from the side of the walk. Somewhere there was a speaker hidden, and it was playing a very sincerely-felt arrangement of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen for the harp and piano.

John almost turned round and headed back to the pub, quiz be damned.

Sherlock finally spoke. “Oh. No.”

Taking a deep breath, John turned up his collar and hugged his jacket closed for armour against the din. “Come on. We’ve already taken the room.”

“Oh. God. No.”

“Come on, Sherlock.” John grabbed him by the sleeve and towed him toward the house.

The owner of the b&b was a Scottish woman named Grace, who was buxom and grey-haired and had a peach-cheeked smile creased with laugh lines. The house was saturated with the smell of evergreen.

“Welcome, come on in. Which of you is Mr. Holmes? Stacy, take their…” She blinked at them. “You don’t have any bags?”

“We hadn’t planned on staying the night,” said John.

“Well,” Grace looked at a loss for a moment. “We have a few emergency travel supplies available, if you’ll be needing them. There’s a basket in the dining room on the banquet—a few toothbrushes, razors, that sort of thing—so feel free to grab what you need. We keep them by in case someone has forgotten something,” she said, then clasped her hands together in front of her stomach and looked around awkwardly. “Well. Stacy, will you show them to their room?”

Something was creeping in a John’s consciousness, slowly but surely, but it fully came into focus only when Stacy opened up the door to reveal a small room with a wardrobe, a window, a small Christmas tree, and only one double bed.

“Sorry, just…” John said. “She said _room_?”

“Yeah.” Stacy didn’t seem to understand the issue.

Sherlock finally spoke up. “There was only one room available, John. I did say.”

“But…” John pointed to the room next door, which appeared to be clean and available.

“Booked,” Stacy said.

“But.” John blinked at the bed. It wasn’t that he necessarily _cared_ very much about sleeping in a bed with a man, except that man would be Sherlock, who—based on his habits throughout the rest of his life—John was certain was likely to be a miserable bed partner. Visions of being kicked awake all night danced in John’s head as he stepped into the room and stared round at it with a distinct sinking feeling in his stomach. He was so _tired_ , and he just wanted to be able to get some rest without incurring accidental violence.

“Feel free to take the bed, John. I’m not sleeping tonight,” Sherlock said.

“Hm?”

“The case. I have too much to think about.”

John tore his gaze away from the Christmas quilt, which depicted a blocky version of the Nativity. “Oh, right. Sure. Thanks. Do you want me to…er. I could stay up and…”

Sherlock waved away his offer. “There’s nothing for you to do right now. Rest.”

With a tight-lipped smile, John sat down on the bed. And then he had no idea what to do; it wasn’t really time for bed, but he was exhausted after a day of travel. He supposed he could play a game on his phone, but he didn’t expect he had the focus even for that. He stared vacantly at the wardrobe and let his mind float from one half-formed thought to the other.

“Go to bed, John.” Sherlock had dropped his coat and suit jacket in a pile next to the door and was rolling up his sleeves. It only then occurred to John just how warm it was in the house.

He cast a look at Sherlock as he stripped his jumper over his head and dropped it over the side of the bed onto his own coat. Sherlock didn’t appear to be paying any attention: he was sitting in the lone chair, a ladder-back nestled down in the small space between the window and the Christmas tree, and he was staring out the window.

Trying not to betray the awkward squirming beneath his skin, John toed off his shoes and took off his jeans and slid down beneath the quilt, warmth be damned. He rolled over away from Sherlock and hunched himself into the covers and waited for sleep to come.

John wouldn’t have thought he’d slept, but the next thing he knew he was opening his eyes to the darkened room, the light from the window casting feathered grey shadows from the Christmas tree across the ceiling and along the opposite wall. Sherlock was crouched down to be in John’s eye-line. He smelled of ozone.

“John,” he hissed.

“Mm?”

“John, wake up.”

John knuckled his eyes. “What the hell?”

“Put on your clothes and come with me.”

“What’s wrong?” Too sleepy to feel awkward, John slid out from the bed and blearily, stumbling, pulled on his jeans.

“Your jumper and coat, too. “

“What’s going on, Sherlock?”

“Come with me.”

In a bit of a fog, John got dressed, ignoring the impatient way Sherlock was pacing back and forth across a three foot area of the rug, his hands tucked behind his back. John pulled on his coat.

“And the buttons,” Sherlock said.

“We’re going outside?” John scrubbed at his face with both hands.

Sherlock sighed. “You’re out of practise.”

“Huh?”

“Didn’t you have to wake up quickly in the army?”

“It’s been a few years, Sherlock.” Eventually John stepped into his shoes and stood watching Sherlock expectantly. “Well?”

Sherlock flashed him a grin. “Let’s go.”

John was led down the stairs and out the front yard. The place was transformed: only half the lights were on, this late at night, and the ones which were on were softened by a thick, lush blanket of freshly-fallen snow.

The world was hushed, the sound soaked up and baffled, the traffic non-existent. Sherlock led John down the toward the pavement, his breath fogging the air. The cold was sharp on the inhale. Every few seconds, another snowflake would fall. It felt almost like a secret mission to be out in the small hours of the morning, sneaking out of the house and letting the door latch silently behind them, then creeping along the kicked-up path of a set of already-laid footprints.

“You’ve been out in this already?” John murmured.

Sherlock turned. The light from the street lamps and the coloured tones of the Christmas decorations mixed on Sherlock’s face, dappled watercolours smoothing the hollows and making him look years younger. His eyes shone. “I waited until it had accumulated,” he said, as if it were an excuse.

“Why?”

Sherlock turned and led John down the pavement. Every few houses another would be lit up with fairy lights. As they walked, the moon revealed itself from behind a copse of trees. John stopped short to stare at it, haloed as it was, bright and huge and beautiful. The hedge next to them was studded with lighted stars.

John cast a sideways glance at Sherlock and his breath was sucked away. The joy on Sherlock’s face, the naked happiness, caught in John’s throat more sharply than the cold night air. Without warning Sherlock’s gaze shifted and he was staring back.

“I didn’t know you liked snow,” John said.

“My mother described me once as a winter child,” Sherlock said, and the poeticism of it made John’s stomach flip. Sherlock looked away and crossed his arms over his chest and stared up at the slash of sky above the rooftops, flat and strangely grey with the mixture of snow and moonlight. “I don’t much care one way or the other for Christmas. But the snow…”

John followed his gaze to see what he saw. He wondered, half in jest, whether Sherlock meant him to deduce something about the weather. The cold was seeping into his shoes the longer they stood there, and it took him with a shiver.

“Here,” Sherlock said, and before John knew what was happening Sherlock was tucking his scarf around John’s neck and tying it in place. It was warm from Sherlock’s body heat, and smelled like his aftershave.

Astonished, John stared at Sherlock as he went back to observing the moon, his arms once again folded over his chest and his hands buried in the folds of his coat. His shoulders crept toward his ears.

The oddness of the situation began to filter into John’s consciousness, bit by bit: the snow and the pre-dawn field trip, Sherlock’s unusual energy and his scarf wrapped round John’s neck. John tried not to stare but it was almost impossible. Was Sherlock high? What was going on with the case? Were they really standing outside at the tail end of an unexpected snowstorm in Wolverhampton simply because…Sherlock liked it out here?

_What the hell?_

John stamped his feet and huddled into his coat. He ducked further into Sherlock’s scarf, and his breath became trapped, a pocket of warm, moist air between the wool and his lower face. It smelled even more of Sherlock’s aftershave down there, and like his shower gel, and like his sweat. John extended his neck again to inhale a lungful of clean, sharp air.

“Come on,” Sherlock said, and he walked down the pavement again, kicking up a fresh path in the snow. John had a passing thought about Sherlock’s expensive shoes but then brushed it aside to follow.

“I…” Sherlock started. The sound of his swallowing was loud in the pre-dawn, diffuse quiet. “It feels like it snowed more when I was a child. I remember emptying my school satchel onto the floor when I woke up to snow, and filling it with apples and bread, stealing cheese from the kitchen, taking a paring knife and a compass and a magnifying glass and a length of rope, and trekking into the woods on the estate. I pretended I was an explorer.”

John caught up to Sherlock and walked beside him, shoulder by shoulder. He envisioned a tiny Sherlock with rounder cheeks and dimpled knees, pulling on a 80’s-style parka and creeping out into the snow before no one noticed he had gone. It made John’s chest expand and glow warm with affection.

“I would be gone all day. The first few times I worried the staff and Mycroft.” John heard his smile. “Got in quite a lot of trouble, as you can imagine.”

“I can, yes.” John looked up at the side of his face and grinned. Their shoulders bumped.

“The snow changed the wood. Made it new…a new planet. An alpine forest. There was so much to see—not the same dull wood I’d already combed over so many times I had it memorised. It hid things. Mysteries under the snow.”

They walked for a bit. John thought of stories of winter from his childhood, but for some reason they caught in his throat. If Sherlock was going to continue to share things, things from his life, rare gifts offered up like diamonds, there was no way on earth John was going to interrupt him. They stepped over a few hummocks of grass, growing through cranks in the pavement and mounded with snow, and their fingers brushed against each other. It tingled. As they continued, John chafed his hands together against the cold.

“There was a stream that ran through the wood. I walked all along it once, from the beginning to the end. I tried it a second time a few weeks later, but it had been a warmer day and I broke through. Injured my shin on the ice. That was a very cold walk home.”

John hummed a laugh. Sherlock took his gloves out of his pocket and pulled them on, and while John was stood wondering why they were off in the first place, Sherlock held up a hand to catch a drifting snowflake on the black leather. They both watched it melt. “Crystalline. Order. Chaos,” Sherlock said. “An idiot once gave a speech about flowers. He supposed that food, desires, all could be explained as necessary for the continuation of human life, but the rose was superfluous. It had beauty, and smell, and colour, and none of them was absolutely necessary. And that was proof of a higher power. ‘Only goodness gives extras.’ But it’s clear to me how ignorant that is. For one thing, though it may not be necessary for humanity, the colour and smell are certainly necessary for the continuation of the particular species of flower. And through the flowers we get the continuation of bees, which are necessary for the pollination of the crops we as humans rely on. A scientist can appreciate both aesthetic beauty and the complexity that brings it about, and…” He stopped and cleared his throat. “The idiot might say the beauty of a snowflake is supreme evidence of a higher power, but I think it’s rather a better evidence for the beauty of chemistry. And geometry.”

For the twentieth time during their surreal, awkward walk John wondered if Sherlock were high.

He opened his mouth to respond, but then Sherlock spun away. He walked over the road and began back the way they came, forging a path in the unbroken snow. As usual, John followed.

“I have some thoughts about the case, if you would like to hear them,” Sherlock said.

John’s heart thudded. “Of course I would.” He took a handful of the soft, dry powder and squeezed it into his palm, compressing it into a hard, finger-shaped pellet before tossing it into the even blanket of snow on the pavement before them. He dried his hand on his jeans.

Sherlock gave him a quick sideways glance before he began. “So far, we’ve had three burglaries. Each happened while no one was in the house, which means the burglar likely planned that to happen, and doesn’t want to encounter anyone. Non-violent? Someone with a criminal past who feared escalation of the crime if they were caught? Someone who thought they could cover their tracks?”

“Well, they clearly could,” John pointed out. “We haven’t found anything.”

“Not yet, John. But I will.” Sherlock folded his hands together and tucked them under his chin as he walked. “They only took select gifts, only wrapped ones. And only ones of a certain size. They—“ He stopped short. “ _Ohhh_.” John stopped still to watch him become invigorated with his revelation. Suddenly he looked so much more like the Sherlock John knew, and it was comforting. “Come on, John.” Sherlock started walking more quickly toward the house.

“Sherlock,” John said after him. “Sherlock. _Sherlock_.” He didn’t want to yell out in the street, but it was important to get him to stop. John feared otherwise Sherlock might wake people up in a more disruptive way. “It’s what, 4 A.M.? 5? Tell me what you’re going to do.”

Sherlock took a few long strides, then stopped. He waited for John to come alongside. “Bins, John. The police are idiots. I’ve been an idiot. We need to look round their bins.”

“Why?”

“The state of their bins will tell me something important.” Sherlock started off again.

John trotted along behind. “Yes, thank you, I had gotten that, but _why_?”

“Looking for rejected spoils.”

“Looking for—it’s _4 A.M._ , Sherlock.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Not now, John. I know that.” But he subsided, as if he really had been planning on phoning for a cab and rooting in bins looking for…what, gifts the thief hadn’t wanted?

“You were going to do it.”

“No.”

“Yes you were.”

“No, John.” 

But he looked so frustrated, like a car spinning his wheels with the handbrake on, that John snickered. He pinched a finger-full of snow off the top of a edge and flicked it at his face. A clod of it rolled down the front of Sherlock’s coat but a tiny bit of it stuck to his nose. Sherlock blinked at him in shock. John giggled back.

“Childish,” Sherlock said, trying to scowl.

“You were supposed to like snow.”

“Not in my face, no.” His scorn was lessened by the drip of snow falling off his nose. John tried to stifle his laughter and it came out as a snort. Sherlock averted his face so John couldn’t see his smile, but it was absolutely unsuccessful.

“When the sun comes up, we can investigate the bins. The gifts will sit ‘til dawn.”

“John…”

“No. I need a few more hours of sleep, and you won’t be able to see enough anyway. Come on.” John tugged Sherlock by the sleeve until he followed.

“This is ridiculous.”

“And yet.” They continued back to the house.

When they got to the path leading up to the door, John stopped. “Sherlock.”

Sherlock had been following so closely he only just managed not to collide with him. “Hm?”

“Tell me: what was the point?” John gestured round them. “This…waking me up, and the walk?”

Sherlock blinked into the coloured lights. His nose and cheekbones were red with cold, and his hair was damply salted with snowflakes, and his throat was a slash of white disappearing down into his collar. He was _beautiful_ , and all the more so for John having spent those years without him. He swallowed. “Didn’t you enjoy it?”

John breathed, and he stared. “Yes, actually. Yes, I did.”

At once Sherlock’s gaze shifted and John was pinned. He could feel his heart pounding suddenly, high in his throat. “I didn’t think I should be the only one to enjoy it,” Sherlock said.

No response was ready. John continued to stare into Sherlock’s eyes, and breathe, and try to think of something to say. The cold was melting into his shoes. Sherlock’s expression relaxed into something softer, something vulnerable, and when his eyelids drooped he inhaled. When he let it out it fogged into John’s face.

“Well,” John said, and licked his lips to ease the dryness. “You weren’t.”

“Good.”

“My feet are pretty cold, though.”

“Feel free to go in.”

“Are you coming with me?”

For a long moment, Sherlock took in the minuscule details on John’s face. “I need to think.”

“You’re staying out here?”

“Yes. We’ve been given a line of investigation the police have missed, and only chance led us here. I’m not giving up yet tonight. I want to pursue the line of thought to its bitter end.”

“Bitterly cold end, you mean,” John said the wind picked up and blew a cloud of glittering crystals toward them off the top of a hedge. “Would you like me to walk with you?”

The tiniest of smiles curled the corner of Sherlock’s lips. “Go in, John. Warm up. Get some rest.”

“You’re sure you’re fine?”

Sherlock slid his palm on the outside of John’s upper arm and squeezed it, just a little. “I’m sure.”

John swallowed hard. “Okay. I’ll, er, see you in a bit, then.”

Heart racing, John turned and headed up the walk. He refused to turn round to watch Sherlock, no matter that the desire was clanging in his chest. When he opened the door it was a near thing, but with the narrow edge of his self-control he pushed his way inside and shut the door. Safe inside, the room lit softly with the lights from the tree, the smell of evergreen permeating the air, his skin tingling with the warmth, John couldn’t help wondering what the hell was going on.

* * *

“ _Sherlock!_ ”

John ran as fast as possible, through room after room of a giant manor house, all decorated for the holiday. He couldn’t find Sherlock. Each room was decorated with a different theme and a different colour, and somewhere in the house music was playing. The bass thrummed through John’s veins like a second pulse, driving him on.

Eventually he reached a massive space in the centre of the house. It was dominated by a tree that appeared hundreds of feet tall, decorated foot to tip by strings of lights that cascaded down from a giant star at the top. The baubles all over it were glittering, shiny, dangerous to the touch, as if covered in a million shards of cut glass. The spectacle was almost too bright too look at. John scanned the entire thing, looking for Sherlock, and when he reached three-quarters of the way up his heart jumped into his throat.

“ _Sherlock!_ ”

He was climbing to the very top of the tree, using the lights like ropes to gain more and more altitude the longer John watched. He begged for Sherlock to come back down, pleaded, but Sherlock ignored him and kept climbing.

“He’s going to fall,” John said, unable to pull his gaze away.

Next to him, another Sherlock ducked his head and whispered in his ear. “He’ll never fall.”

“His hands are already bleeding. I have to go—“ John broke into a run toward the tree, but the Sherlock next to him grabbed his arms and held him fast.

“He’s beyond your reach now.”

“Never. He’s never.”

“He has to go, John.”

“God, no…” John struggled against Sherlock’s grip, but the longer he pulled the harder it became to move until his limbs felt frozen. Try as he might, they wouldn’t move. All John could do was stare up at a bloodied, climbing Sherlock, feeling the warmth of the Sherlock next to him, feeling his breath warm his face against the cold of the room. John’s heart raced and he felt ill. Suddenly, the Sherlock up the tree slipped, his hands wet with blood. He reached out for the nearest string of lights, and—

John’s eyes shot open. He gasped for air as the adrenaline in his bloodstream crested and began to fall.

The room was freezing, which wasn’t helped by the fact that the quilt had slipped off the bed and to the floor. John pushed up onto an elbow and stared around the room, but even in the murkiness he could tell Sherlock wasn’t back yet. John sucked in a breath and flopped back onto his pillow as his heart pounded in his throat. His mouth was dry as dust. He considered phoning Sherlock and asking him to bring water when he came back, then considered just getting up and getting a drink from the tap across the hall, but instead of either option John lay in bed and thought of his nightmare and waited for his pulse to slow. It was quite an obvious thing, the content of the dream, the reason for it, but that didn’t mean it was welcome. John would have been extremely happy if his psyche had quit trying to exorcise its anxiety through nightmares, but it seemed that hadn’t happened yet; if they weren’t often about Afghanistan anymore, and were seldom about Sherlock’s betrayal, apparently now they were going to be about Christmas and Sherlock’s strangely-conflicted behaviour.

By the time John’s heart rate fell to normal ranges he was most of the way back to sleep.

* * *

John woke to find Sherlock curled on the bed next to him, on top of the quilt, fast asleep. Light was pouring in the windows.

It was always a marvel to watch Sherlock sleep. His hair flopped limply over his eyes, and his mouth was open, and all the lines in his face were smoothed out. It was a completely different sort of beauty than Sherlock out in the cold. This one was all serenity, all peace, with none of the conscious grace with which Sherlock usually held himself. He was warm and alive and here, and John was so thankful for it that for a while he forgot to be angry Sherlock had ever been gone.

The moment of sleepy reflection didn’t last long. After only a few minutes Sherlock blinked awake. His eyes focussed immediately on John’s face. “I need to see what’s in their bins.”

John chuckled and, before he could stop himself, brushed the lock of Sherlock’s hair off his forehead. “Good morning.”

“They should be awake, now.”

“You want to get started early on that trespassing charge, don’t you?”

Sherlock made a derisive noise. “No one is there. That’s why the thief broke in during the morning.”

“Know that, do you?”

“It’s what makes sense, John.”

“Nosy neighbours?”

“Didn’t stop the thief.”

“You really think the thief was picking through the rubbish in the middle of the morning.”

A smile quirked the corner of Sherlock’s mouth. “Come on, John.” He pushed himself awake and ruffled his own hair with his fingers. John’s stomach flipped.

* * *

As they bumbled out onto the landing, heading out, John noticed the other bedroom’s door standing open. It looked as if it hadn’t been touched. “I thought that room had been reserved.”

“It had,” said Grace, coming up the stairs with an armful of folded bath towels. “They never showed up. Hope everything’s okay, the dears.”

“You know them?”

“Never met them before in my life. Just wishing them well. The holidays can be complicated, you know.”

_I do,_ John thought. He was acutely aware of Sherlock standing at his side, pulling on his gloves and adjusting the lay of his coat.

“Let’s go,” Sherlock said.

“You’re sure you won’t stay for breakfast?” Grace said.

“Yes.”

“Sorry,” John said, giving her his most wistful expression. “He wants to get an early start of it.”

“I bet he keeps you on your toes, that one,” she said.

“Er…”

“Dragging you everywhere, won’t let you get a meal in edgeways…”

“Well…”

“You ought to stand up for yourself.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “I’d withhold sex. That used to work a treat for me.”

“Well, okay then,” John said quickly, trying not to fall down the stairs as Sherlock tugged at his coat. “Looks like it’s time to go. Thank you!” he called from three steps down.

“You have yourself a good holiday, okay? Don’t get into too much trouble you can’t get out of.”

“You too—I mean—Thanks—Bye…” He staggered down the last few steps and only just managed not to plough into Sherlock at the bottom. “Jesus, what the hell…”

“We’ve got to go, John.”

“Yeah no kidding.”

“I’d like to finish this and get back to London as soon as possible.”

“Hold on—“ John fiddled with his shoe, which was still soaked from their journey in the snow. Sherlock was poised at the door like a dog ready to spring out. “Let me just… Hold _on_.”

“I’m holding.”

“Fuck.” Finally John won a victory over the sodden leather and looked at Sherlock’s feet. “How come yours are fine?”

“These are high-quality, John. If you didn’t buy such cheap—“

“Oh, just go,” John interrupted. “Forget I asked.”

“Done.”

The cab was waiting to take them back to the crime scene. In the ride over John cast Sherlock a few sideways glances, but Sherlock looked the way he always looked; the strange lightness in his expression had vanished, but in its place was the familiar hound-on-the-scent focus that John adored just as much.

He licked his lips and directed his gaze out the window, as much to stop staring at Sherlock as to hide his face. Something strange was going on with Sherlock, and it was high time John figured out what.

* * *

There was nothing in Gina and Tori’s bins.

They contained the usual household rubbish, but apart from the banana peels and the nappies and the coffee grounds, there wasn’t anything that looked remotely like it was related to the crime.

John reported this fact to Sherlock, who was standing back with his hands clean and his arms crossed over his chest. “Next house over, perhaps,” he said, and John glared.

“Fine.”

They looked around to ensure no one was round, then snuck into the back garden of Gina and Tori’s neighbour to investigate. John grumpily looked through the trash while Sherlock snuck around, peeking in the curtains and prodding the hedge, though what he was looking for John had no idea. Again, they came up empty.

“Wait. If someone had come to bring their kitchen rubbish out here, wouldn’t they have seen the gifts? They’d have called the cops already. Why am I digging through to the bottom?”

Sherlock looked up from where he was poking underneath a rather large holly plant. “They could have shuffled them to the bottom to keep them hid.” He looked at John as if his question were inconsequential.

“Sherlock,” John sighed. “What’s your plan if we can’t find anything?”

“I’m sure there will be something in London,” he said.

“From a previous heist? What, are you just assuming their bins haven’t been emptied yet?” Or are you…” John narrowed his eyes. “Or are you just assuming there will be another burglary and you can investigate that one to your little heart’s content?”

Sherlock firmed his mouth and strode boldly across the break in between the houses to the next neighbour. John huffed and followed after him.

This time Sherlock deigned to get his hands dirty. He opened up the wheelie bin and sucked in a breath.

“What?” John said, expecting to find a body. Instead, sitting on top of the plastic bin bags was a whole armload of unwrapped toys. “And they’re…theirs?”

“Yes,” Sherlock said as he picked up a few plastic cars, a mobile that played music, and a strange-looking stuffed monster toy. Each of them he disregarded with disgust. “The wrapping is the same. The thief might have left prints on the packaging…” he murmured under his breath. Then he found something that made him frown. He pulled it out of the bin.

“Frankenstein Fran?”

“It seems so.”

“But I thought that’s what the thief was after.”

“Apparently not.”

John looked around and noticed an older woman across the street, staring at them. “Er, Sherlock?”

Sherlock grunted as he typed something into his phone.

“Sherlock. I think we need to…go.”

Sherlock muttered, “Damn,” but John didn’t harbour an illusions that he was responding to John in any way.

“No, really.” A police car pulled up, and he got out to speak to the woman. “Sherlock, _we need to go_.”

Something in John’s voice must have broken through the shell of Sherlock’s attention, because he looked up and cursed. “ _Run_.”

They took off through the back garden, pelting like clumsy jackrabbits through the heavy, wet, melting snow. John hoped the cop would be just as out of practise running through snow as John’s shoes were horrible for it. He slipped and went down to a knee, and Sherlock yanked him up by the elbow. They hurdled themselves over garden walls, getting snow up their sleeves and inside their jackets and down the backs of their necks. Joy burned bright and furious in John’s chest, warming him against the chill. He felt as if they were boys running from mischief, the two of them, _he and Sherlock, together_ , and the past few months of awkward conversation and stilted attempts melted away. In that moment he did indeed feel as if it were the two of them against the world, and the pleasure of it burned in his heart like a steam engine pushing him on.

Sherlock steered them left, then right, and they burst from behind a hedge onto a cleared pavement. Sherlock shook the snow from his coat and hair, breathing heavily. He cast a glance at John and he smiled his ‘we’ve been naughty’ smile. His cheeks were pink with cold and exertion. John adored him. “Sh—“ He tried to catch his breath. “Should be easier now. They can’t follow our footprints.”

John coughed a laugh. “We’ll still stick out like sore thumbs.”

“Come on.” Sherlock beckoned him down the road. They huffed and puffed until their heart-rates settled, by which point Sherlock stood them outside a little bakery. “In here?”

John finished knocking the snow off his lower legs before answering. _Breakfast._ “Fantastic idea.”

* * *

Sherlock actually ate. John swallowed down his surprise as they contacted the West Midlands police and filled them in what had happened, blaming their presence on Peterson and suggesting the cops dust the presents in the bin for prints before returning them to Gina and Tori in time for Christmas. John didn’t know whether any of that would happen, but he hoped so.

He also hoped there wouldn’t be too much trouble waiting for them in London.

“We could have just phoned the police first, you know. Told them what was going on,” John said.

Sherlock waved that away like the ramblings of a madman. “Unnecessary.”

“You just didn’t want to give up the search yourself.”

“Of course.”

“Idiot.” But John smiled.

* * *

On the train back, Sherlock thought through the case out loud.

“Thief steals gifts. Similar ones across the board. People really have no imagination, do they. Like cattle.”

“Sherlock…”

“So at the third house, he dumps the gifts three doors down, opened but otherwise unharmed. Why? What could they be _doing_?”

A thought occurred to John. “Sherlock, they need to look through the bins in London. Now. Before any of them are emptied.”

Sherlock gave him a smile tinged with pride. “I’ve already texted Peterson.”

“And they should make sure all the presents are accounted for, if they’ve found any.”

“Yes, John. Well done.”

John scowled. “Listen, just because we’re not all as quick on the pickup…”

Instead of responding in kind, Sherlock just smiled more broadly. “I’d kept you out late, barely let you sleep, barely let you eat. You weren’t at your best, John.”

“Don’t make excuses for me.”

For some reason, Sherlock smiled even brighter.

“What?” John asked.

“Nothing,” said Sherlock.

“Why are you smiling like that?”

“I’m not.”

John decided that Sherlock was teasing him, and so he turned his back and huddled down into his coat to look out the window. He was damp up to the knees and didn’t need any of this bullshit right now.

Next to him, Sherlock started chuckling. They rode in silence for most of the next hour.

Eventually, John turned. “They’re looking for something.”

“Obviously.”

“On one of the toys? In one of the toys? The Frankenstein doll?”

“Most likely, yes.”

“Drugs?”

“Wouldn’t be a stretch to assume so.”

“God. That’s horrible.”

“It happens, John.”

“Yeah, in films. Not in real life. Not the week leading up to Christmas.”

“We’ll solve this before tomorrow. I promise.”

“It doesn’t get those kids their gifts back, if the bins have been emptied.”

Sherlock turned and stared at him. “What do you care?”

“Sherlock.” John was suddenly furious. “They’re gifts for kids. For Christmas.”

“You saw those houses. The parents can buy more.”

“Not Gina and Tori.”

“But they’ll get them back.”

“They’re lucky, sure. But what if it happens again? What if it happens to someone who has even less money?”

“Oh _that’s_ what’s bothering you.”

“Kids not having gifts for Christmas? Yeah, I should say it—“

“No, you’re having class issues again.” Sherlock made a rude noise. “Dull.”

“ _Class issues?!_ Sherlock—“

“It’ll be fine, John.”

“ _How_ can you say it’s just going to be _fine_?”

Sherlock’s phone dinged in his hand and he looked at it.

“Sherlock, how can you say—“

“Shh.” Sherlock started typing furiously into his mobile.

John blinked. “What? What’s going on?”

Sherlock’s mouth was a line. “There’s been another robbery.”


	3. March of the Christmas Dolls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Speechless, John stepped back to put a bit of distance between their bodies. “Er, that’s. That’s…nice of you.”
> 
> For a moment, Sherlock stared down at him. John could nearly feel Sherlock’s breath on his lips. His mouth ran dry. His heart felt as if it were trying to pound its way up his throat. _Sherlock Holmes. What are you thinking?_
> 
> Sherlock scattered the tension by spinning off to grab his coat and sweep downstairs. “Come on, John. Let’s see what Peterson has for us this time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to BillieThePoet and Wearitcounts for being fantastic betas. They do generous, hilarious, marvellous things.

“Hurry up, John. You’re wasting time.”

“ _Wasting time?!_ ” John emerged from the bath in a cloud of steam. He tightened the belt on his towelling robe. “Fuck off. I was cold, my jeans were wet, I hadn’t bathed since yesterday morning, and there was no way on god’s green planet I was about to spend a second day in the same clothes I was wearing while digging through someone’s bins this morning.”

Sherlock made a rude noise. “Hurry up, then.”

“I don’t see you complaining about having gotten a shower, either. And thank goodness.”

John was blessed with one of Sherlock’s best face-curling frowns before he trotted up the stairs to get dressed.

He threw on clothes as quickly as possible, and wasn’t all the way back downstairs before Sherlock picked up the tail of their bickering again. “Are you suggesting that I smelt bed when we got home?”

John flashed back to the scent of Sherlock’s scarf and cleared his throat. “Yes, I’m suggesting that you smelt quite a bit after twenty-four hours in the same clothing—five of which on a train, who-knows-how-many walking outside, and some more time spent digging through the rubbish. You can thank me later when this new victim doesn’t cringe away from your disastrous pong.”

Sherlock snorted and grabbed John’s coat. “So that’s what you do with that nose of yours.” He held it out so John could put his arms into it.

With a disbelieving laugh, John complied. “Oh, really? Really? You’re going to play it that way? You? You’re not exactly lacking in the nostril area either, my friend.”

When John turned round, he caught Sherlock with a bit of a smile curling the corner of his mouth. “It’s how I sniff out crime.”

It was so ridiculous, and so unexpected, that John laughed. He pulled on his gloves. “Silly me, I thought…it was…er.” Sherlock had wrapped his scarf about John’s neck and was pulling the ends through the loop. John looked up at him and blinked.”What are you doing?”

“You’ve been cold all day.”

“Haven’t you been?”

“My coat is warmer than yours.”

Speechless, John stepped back to put a bit of distance between their bodies. “Er, that’s. That’s…nice of you.”

For a moment, Sherlock stared down at him. John could nearly feel Sherlock’s breath on his lips. His mouth ran dry. His heart felt as if it were trying to pound its way up his throat. _Sherlock Holmes. What are you thinking?_

Sherlock scattered the tension by spinning off to grab his coat and sweep downstairs. “Come on, John. Let’s see what Peterson has for us this time.”

* * *

Peterson showed up to the crime scene with a stunningly-cranky expression on his face. “What in the _hell_ were you two playing at? I just got a call from West Midlands telling me you were out in Wolverhampton buggering up their investigation.”

“Oh, hardly.” Sherlock ducked under the police tape, and John followed after. “We got you the information about the bins, didn't we?"

"As much good as it does us." Peterson led them up the walk to the house. It was small, with a tiny, well-kept garden and a small beech tree out front. "What else did you learn?"

"They're not selling off the Freakenstein Fran dolls," Sherlock said.

Peterson stopped short. "Yes, I gathered that too, since this lot—" he thumbed at the front door, "—had theirs stolen, but we found it along with the rest of the toys, safe as houses, dumped into the rubbish bins in back.”

"Oh thank god," John said.

Sherlock gave him a look but quickly focussed on Peterson again. "So the toys from this house are largely the same as the ones from the other houses."

"I don't know if people are running out of imagination, but in my day the idea that four different houses could have similar presents for the kiddies would have seemed outrageous," said Peterson.

"Oh come on," Sherlock scoffed. "History is full of Christmases where every kid wanted the same thing."

"Red Rider BB gun?" John asked.

Sherlock gave him a blank look.

"Never mind," John said. "You'll shoot your eye out."

" _What_?"

"Never mind."

Sherlock blinked at him a moment then continued. "It doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility that the thief could be targeting houses where a selection of the gifts are similar."

"What," John said, "somewhere, an employee at a shop has a list he’s working from?"

"They've shopped at different places," said Sherlock, waving that idea away with an expression of barest scorn. "I ruled that out ages ago. You saw the lists."

"Oh," John said. He shoved his hands in his pockets.

"Come on," Sherlock said to Peterson. "Let's go in. It may not have snowed, but it's still cold out here."

Inside the house SOCO were doing a bit of evidence collection under the tree, and John noticed that they'd gone over the doors and windows for prints, but there wasn't the usual buzzing of activity that surrounded a murder investigation. The room itself was clean but cluttered, with a buggy tucked off into one corner and a bunch of stuffed toys strewn round it. There were two Wii controllers on the coffee table, and an abandoned juice box, and the entire room was topped off with a maelstrom of glittery, felted, schoolroom-art-class holiday cheer.

Sherlock was doing his usual rounds peering at the tops of tables and the small telly, ducking down to look along the window ledges, and examining the door handles. John watched him for a few moments but very quickly his mind wandered. The detritus of two small children was everywhere. He thought of a universe in which he himself had two little ones but just as quickly dismissed it; at that moment, that sort of life seemed very, very, far away. As he watched, Sherlock crouched to study the floorboards with an intensity that was beautiful to look at, and John didn’t feel any lack at all.

The flash of Sherlock's coat turning a corner caught his eye, and John followed him into the kitchen. Sherlock examined the door out the back. After only a few moments he stood and frowned.

"What?" John said.

"He came in and out through here.”

"Okay? Why the frown?"

"No prints."

"Ah."

"No threads, no dirt, nothing."

To the collective outcry from two of the SOCO Sherlock pushed open the door and stepped gingerly out onto the back stoop. He stood straddling the threshold, one foot inside and the other out, and swayed from side to side looking at something. Then he crouched to get a closer look at the step outside.

"What?" said John again. With no body to examine, he felt even more useless than usual.

"He took his shoes off."

"Outside?"

"I can see the dirt traces left, as mud, with the round toe of a medium-sized adult shoe. Unisex."

"How do you know it's not one of the owners?"

Sherlock gestured to the tiny, fenced-in back garden with a rusted swing set and the piles of dead leaves. "The mud is fresh. What reason would they have had to be back here in the last day? It's been too cold to play or to work on the landscape—which, by the way, it's clear they don't bother themselves with. This door doesn't go anywhere, either." He narrowed his eyes at the hedgerow surrounding the back garden and went to go investigate it, twig by leaf. John left him to it. Instead he allowed his attention to be occupied instead examining the artwork on the refrigerator. One of the children's names was Jonny. He seemed to be either prolific or his parents put up every single piece of art he created.

"Aunt and niece," Sherlock said from the doorway. He slid the door shut. "Aunt, grown niece, and her two young boys. Five and…one, if I had to guess. Perhaps younger." He scowled.

"What?" John thought perhaps he should just record him saying _what_ into his phone so he could play it back at prime intervals. Save himself the trouble.

Sherlock ambled toward John. “Not parents and child.”

“Oh.” John blinked at the refrigerator.

“Though I suppose you could be forgiven in assuming,” Sherlock said casually—too casually. John suspected he was trying to soften the blow, which was…sweet, he supposed, if a bit obvious.

John huffed a laugh and crossed his arms. “So?”

Sherlock frowned. “So…?”

“Go on.” John gestured out toward the back. “What did you find?”

Sherlock scowled harder. “Nothing.”

John raised his eyebrows. “Nothing?”

“Nothing apart from those footprints, no.” Sherlock pulled his coat tighter around himself, as if there were a draught. “I don’t know how they did it, but they broke some branches on the hedge pushing through to the back door but left nothing else behind. Not a hair, no fabric. Nothing.”

“So we don’t know much else, then.”

“No.” Sherlock peered into space for a moment, then swept toward the door. “Come on. I need to look at the dolls. I’ve been an idiot, John: I should have done this immediately.”

He followed Sherlock out to the lounge, where Peterson was talking with SOCO. A small part of him hoped there would be some snippy altercation that would occupy Sherlock’s mind and comfort him with conflict, the predictable arse. Affection suddenly bloomed warmly in John’s chest.

“I need to see the dolls,” Sherlock said, interrupting the conversation.

Peterson held up one finger, indicating Sherlock should wait.

“All three we have here. I need to compare them.”

Still, Peterson stood with a finger raised.

“Peterson—“

At which point Peterson swiveled on his heel and glared daggers at Sherlock. “I am speaking. Not to you. Lestrade might put up with your rudeness, but I have a five-year-old and you’re no match for her.”

John snickered. Sherlock glared at them both.

Peterson went back to his conversation and John touched Sherlock’s elbow. Sherlock started as if he’d been burned. John shoved both hands in his pockets; the case was clearly putting Sherlock more than usually on-edge. Maybe conflict wasn’t actually what he needed at the moment.

“Let’s go.”

“No, John. I need the—“

“Come on. Let’s take a walk.”

“John—“

“Nope.” He steered Sherlock out the door, not caring a whit what the hell Peterson thought was going on. He could feel Sherlock beside him stewing in his anger, and John wanted to get him out the door before it all spilled over. “We’re going for a walk. You’re going to let Peterson alone for a while.”

“John—“

“Hush.”

John led them down the sidewalk for a few yards before Sherlock huffed in indignation. “This is intolerable. It’s just a burglary.”

“It’s just four burglaries.”

“It should be a three, at best.”

“Perhaps not.”

“We know _nothing._ ”

“We don’t know nothing. We know a few things.”

“Useless.”

“We don’t have much time,” John said. “Christmas is tomorrow, and—“

“Don’t you think I know that, John?” Sherlock hissed through his teeth. “Kindly shut up if you’re not going to make yourself useful.”

John nearly yelled, but bit it back; he didn’t need to make a scene in the middle of the street, and he doubted it would prove useful. He breathed carefully and they walked in a stewing, sullen quiet for a minute. Eventually John swallowed his frustration and said, “Explain to me what’s going on. Use small words.”

Sherlock gave him a sidelong glance and a wry look. “I thought you told me you weren’t an idiot. In fact, I remember you getting quite a bit—“

“We’re pretending, Sherlock.”

“I have to pretend you’re an idiot?”

“Shouldn’t tax you too much.”

“Mm.” Sherlock thought as they walked. At some point he’d started walking so close to John they bumped shoulders as they steered round a child’s toy abandoned on the pavement. “They’re looking for something they lost. Something to do with the dolls. Something they could access even though the packaging wasn’t tampered with.”

“A message? On the box?”

“Could be. We won’t know until Peterson stops being a prat and gives me access.”

John tried to keep him moving forward, body and mind. The feel of Sherlock so close was comforting and warm against the bitter cold. “What else will you be looking for? When you get access?”

“I presume that there won’t be fingerprints. Everything has been remarkably clean so far.”

John nodded. “What else?”

“How should I know? I need _data_ , John,” Sherlock spat between his teeth.

John sighed heavily and spun them back the other way. “I don’t suppose it’s too much to expect that you have a theory about what it could be.”

“I’ve purposefully been avoiding forming one, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

“You don’t want it to colour your perception.”

Sherlock bobbed his head.

“Sherlock. I just wanted to say…” John sighed again, and curled his fingers into his pocket. “I’ve noticed you’ve been…trying.” Next to him, Sherlock said nothing. Nor did John really expect him to. “To share things.”

“Well-spotted, John,” Sherlock said acerbically.

“Wait, seriously? I tried to thank you and you’re just going to—“

“Let’s see if Peterson is finished with his very important conversation,” Sherlock said, trotting up the front walk of the house, leaving John standing on the pavement with a knot of frustration in his gut. Well, so much for that.

* * *

Getting all the dolls gathered together at the same time was more trouble than John thought. Or, perhaps not, if he’d stopped to think about it; it was bound to be complicated.

The first two had already been released back to the victims, and the third was still in custody of the SOCO. In order to facilitate Sherlock’s request, Peterson had to get all the pieces together, and that was going to take some time. Meanwhile, he sent Sherlock and John away saying he’d call when they could come down to the station and have a look.

“At the _station_?” Sherlock said, sounding as if he’d have to be dragged over broken glass before he’d get a chance to look at the evidence.

“Yes, at the station. No one is letting you just wander off with it, no matter what you say.”

John had to drag Sherlock away by the elbow.

“I’m hungry. You’re buying me tea,” John said.

“I’m bu— Why am _I_ buying it, John?”

“Because I said so,” he said, not having a good answer besides _distraction_.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Well, I am,” John said. “I haven’t had anything since that bun on the train. You may be able to survive on snowflakes and fairy dust, but we mortals have to have something every once in a while or we get very, very cranky with the people we’re working with. Which I know I’ve mentioned over and over, but you conveniently seem to delete it whenever it suits you. So I’m telling you now.”

Sherlock made a rude noise. “I don’t delete it.”

“Right. You just ignore it. That’s better. Thanks for the consideration.”

With that, Sherlock fell silent. He led John round the corner to a little Thai restaurant that they’d been to once before.

“Christmas,” John said once they’d ordered. Sherlock made a small grunting sound like a suckling pig and he arranged and rearranged his napkin on his lap. “Are you ready?”

“Ready for what, John?”

“Listen, you were the one who decorated the flat. I presumed that meant you were up for celebrating. You, me, Mrs. Hudson, remember?” Sherlock scowled just enough to set off the fuse in John’s chest. “What is your _problem_ today?”

“I don’t have one.”

“You’re being a real dick.”

“What, more than usual?”

“A different kind than usual.”

Sherlock actually looked up at that, just for a moment. “Explain.”

“ _Explain_? I mean ordinary Sherlock I can handle—I even like. This is…” John’s fingers briefly curled in toward his palms like making a spasmodic fist. “I don’t know what it is. You should be elated: a burglary, not even a murder, and still it’s putting you through your paces. I’d have thought you would be entertained. Instead you’re being…surly.”

“ _Surly_.” Sherlock snorted.

“Yes. Just like that.” The waitress came back with John’s soup. “Listen,” John said when she’d gone. “Are you going to talk to me or not?”

Sherlock’s mouth pressed into a firm line, and he looked at John for a moment, but the openly-grumpy expression lasted only a few seconds before it was wiped from his face and replaced with utter blankness. “No.”

“Fine.” John crossed his arms over his chest and leaned away to read the inscription on the giant Buddha statue looming off to his right. If Sherlock was going to insist upon being childish and pissy, John was just going to leave him alone. Perhaps the case was angering him; lord knows whether he truly ranked burglaries far below murders in that mind of his, and whether the fact that he was having trouble with something so lesser, when in the past he had solved murders from the comfort of his own home, was having some effect on his mood.

Or maybe it was something else entirely.

Either way, John didn’t expect to get anything out of him during the meal, so he ate his noodles in peace and tried not to notice the sullen line of Sherlock’s mouth until they were well on their way to the Yard.

* * *

John should have guessed that, judging by the way the case had been going so far, taking a look at the dolls wasn’t going to yield the results they all were hoping for.

“This is _pointless_ ,” Sherlock said, looking from one to the other to the other. He went down the row once more with his magnifying glass, looking for who-the-hell-knows-what on the packaging. “Unopened. Unmarked. From three separate vendors, corroborated by the size and placement of the glue from the price tags. All three dolls look the same as the photograph on the internet. There is _nothing here_.”

The frustration was knitting up into an audible knot in Sherlock’s throat. He sounded more disappointed in himself than anything, John wagered, and the idea of that was almost more bothersome than being stuck on the case. “Wait, so if the thief dumped these, he must have known they were the wrong ones. So how?”

“Exactly, John.” Sherlock frowned at the packages, then looked up to meet John’s eye. “How did they?” He seemed legitimately to be prompting him for an answer.

“I…don’t know.”

“I presume the correct item would have some marking that these lack.”

“Because if he didn’t have to cut open the packages, the marking or message or item must be visible from the outside.”

“He didn’t have to open the packages to know it was the wrong one. He would immediately have known once he took the gift wrapping off.”

“And then moved on to the next house,” John said.

“Which means any moment now, there’s bound to be another burglary.”

The fresh bit of pride warming in John’s chest was immediately dashed with cold. “You’re right.”

“Of course I’m right.”

“Shit, can we— Where is he going to hit next?”

Sherlock frowned and started gathering the three dolls in preparation for returning them to the police, fussing and pushing them around. “I still don’t have enough data, John. Medium-sized feet, sensible shoes, can be away from work or school during the day. Likely kind-hearted, or he wouldn’t have dumped the gifts so close to home. Looking for a message or something in with the wrapping.” He grimaced and banged his fist on the table. “I can’t _think._ ”

John stared at him in consternation. After a moment, he nodded. “Right.” He turned to the door. “Come on.”

“Where are you going?”

“We’re going to all the shops where they bought those dolls. Maybe someone there saw something.”

Sherlock caught up with him in the corridor. “He’s not likely to have been that obvious, John.”

“Yeah, but he has to have figured out the houses where the doll he was looking for was likely to have gone to, yeah? Looking for a specific doll. So let’s just ask. No harm in it, and maybe we’ll get some sort of clue.”

Beside him, Sherlock pouted all the way out to the lifts and down to the ground floor. John was beginning to be concerned: something was definitely up with Sherlock. He seemed sidetracked and frustrated, and more than a little angry with himself. John wasn’t sure it was the case. Perhaps it was something to do with the awkwardness between them. Perhaps Sherlock was becoming tired of it at last.

His thumbs were flying over the screen of his phone, so John had to be the one to flag down a cab—which meant they were likely to be standing on the kerb for a decent amount of time. John was just rearing up to broach the subject of Sherlock’s mood again when Sherlock suddenly stopped typing and his spine stiffened.

“What?”

Sherlock’s fingers curled round his mobile. “Fifth, John.”

“There’s been a fifth?”

“Yes.”

“ _This is ridiculous_ ,” John barked. A passing woman in a white parka stared at him as she walked by.

“Peterson texted me the address. We’ll probably get there before the—“

“God _damn_ it.” A cab pulled up and John yanked open the door. “Let’s get this over with. _Goddamnit._ ”

Sherlock slid in after John and stared at him. “Why are you taking this so badly?”

“Why are you in such a rotten mood?”

“Address?” said the cabbie.

Sherlock gave the address while John stewed.

“Because, Sherlock.” John tried to shove down his temper. “Tomorrow is Christmas. Someone is taking presents from children the day before Christmas.”

“On the bright side, he’s not likely to break in anywhere tomorrow if we don’t catch him today. This is his last chance. People will be home for the holiday.”

“And then some kid will end up with a doll that…I don’t know…the _mob_ is looking for. No, this doesn’t get better, Sherlock.”

“We’ll find him, John.”

“You keep saying that, but—“

“We will.” And then Sherlock, in the strangest move yet, unfastened his seat belt and scooted sideways into the middle seat, effectively squashing himself to John’s side. John blinked into the middle distance. “I promise, John,” Sherlock said, ducking his head to speak closer to John’s ear. His tone of voice was gentle, intimate, and it made John both want to shiver and to run away. Flirting, insulting, seductive… What was Sherlock _doing_? “I know it bothers you, but we’re working on it. I won’t stop until I figure this out.”

John tried to scoff, but his throat was dry. “Like that makes a change.”

Sherlock slid back to his seat and re-fastened his seat belt. “Stop worrying, John.”

“See, this is what I don’t get, Sherlock.” John turned sideways in an attempt to face him, his nerves jangling. “You say that, but in the same breath you get so frustrated with yourself that you punch a table.”

“I didn’t punch the table.”

“You wanted to.” Sherlock pressed his lips together. John went on. “So please, for the love of god, explain to me how those two things fit together.”

They rode in silence for a good thirty seconds before Sherlock spoke. “I’m not…necessarily frustrated about the case.” John stared and raised an eyebrow until Sherlock continued. “I suspect the holiday itself is putting me on edge.”

“The holiday.”

“Yes.”

“Christmas is putting you on edge.”

“Yes. That happens, John.”

“Of course it does, Sherlock. It happens to people who give a shit about it. A description which, by the way, doesn’t match you. You don’t care about Christmas at all unless it means mince pies you can eat when you think I’m not looking. So tell me again how you _care_ so very much about the holiday?”

“You’ve been belittling my attempts all week, John.”

“Wait, so this is my fault?”

“I decorated, I bought you gifts, I arranged for Mrs. Hudson to have a tree, I—“

“You decorated exactly the same way—wait, what?”

“—sent a gift along to Mother via Mycroft who, by the way, put me through a humiliating—“

“You arranged for Mrs. Hudson to have a tree?”

Sherlock stopped his screed to look at John. “Yes, which you’d have known if you hadn’t been too busy being irritated at me to pay attention to the evergreen needles in the entryway. She hadn’t yet swept up this morning.”

“When did you—“

“You’re at work more often now. I have a lot of time to myself these days.”

John blinked at him, at the quiet tone in his voice. “Oh.”

“I thought she would enjoy it. She says every year that she plans to get a tree and never does.”

“Oh.” John stared, a bit taken aback. The gesture seemed tremendously out of character for him, but then, Mrs. Hudson did always seem to be the exception to his general misanthropy. Something that felt strangely like pride started glowing in his gut. He looked out his window and licked his lips and tried to reconcile the fact of Sherlock’s effort with the general impression he gave. John realised, not for the first time, that he had changed in his time away. And perhaps this was just another way in which he was different. Perhaps John was being a little hard on him. He found on occasion that he was angrier with Sherlock than he ought to be—than he would have been before he left. Maybe this was more about John than it was about Sherlock. Maybe the wound wasn’t yet healed at the deepest levels. He thought about his nightmare and curled his fist on his thigh. Maybe he needed a bit more time to be over it than he’d thought.

“And no, John. I didn’t just do it so she’d bake me something, whatever you think.”

John coughed a laugh and slanted Sherlock a smile. “I hadn’t been thinking that, but now I do.”

“Psychology is a tricky medium.”

John leaned against the door and let the cold emanating through the glass soothe the warmth on his cheeks. The cabbie had the heat on full-blast, John realised. “So why is Christmas putting you on edge?”

“Why is Christmas putting _you_ on edge?”

“It’s not.”

“It certainly is, John. You’ve been sharp all week.”

_You are confusing the hell out of me._ “Lots of flu at work.”

“Mm,” Sherlock said in disbelief. “I’m sure.”

“Besides. Christmas puts everyone on edge.”

“Other people seem to enjoy it.”

“Sure, but it drives them mad at the same time.”

“It’s never bothered me before.”

“You never cared before.”

Sherlock was quiet. “Not in a long, long time.”

John left that one alone.

* * *

They were the second to the house, behind Peterson. John could only assume he’d rushed over immediately so Sherlock wasn’t the first responder to the harried mother’s call. As it was, Sherlock pushed past him into the house while the woman was soothing an infant draped over her shoulder.

“John, go search the bins.”

He looked to Peterson, who shrugged and waved a hand. “Oh, fine, go. I’m losing patience with this.”

John trotted out to the back to investigate their bins and those of the nearest few neighbours. Eventually he found the gifts dumped in with the recycling four doors down. He looked through, thanking some deity somewhere that there was no food refuse this time, but as he got toward the bottom he still hadn’t found the damn doll. He spent another few minutes looking through before snapping off his gloves and going back into the house.

“Sherlock.” He found Sherlock half under the Christmas tree, his legs sticking out as if it had fallen on him, looking like a spindly, black-legged, Wicked Witch of the West. “Sherlock, there’s no doll.”

The infant behind them started crying. Its mother hushed it and started bouncing it on her hip. “Doll?” she said.

Sherlock wriggled until he could sit up. There was tinsel in his hair. “What?”

From the next room, another infant started crying, which made the first baby start crying louder. The mother cursed. “I just got him down, too…” she said under her breath.

“John, that’s ridiculous. There has to be a— SHUT UP.” Sherlock scowled at the mother and child. Her eyes got very, very wide. “I can’t THINK with that baby crying—“ Then Sherlock froze, and his eyes got very wide. “Oh.” He hopped up to his feet. “John. _Stupid._ John, this whole case has been bungled from the start.” He headed for the door.

“What are you— Hold on,” he said to the mother, “Sherlock, wait.” He grabbed Sherlock’s elbow just before left John in the dust. “Sherlock, explain to me right now what’s going on.”

Sherlock spun and his eyes sparkled. The relief and excitement rolled off him in spades. “Infants, John. What have there been, in all five burglaries? _Infants_.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s not the dolls, John. Come.”

John shot the mother a shrug and followed Sherlock out to the pavement.

“Show me the gifts,” Sherlock said, so John led him in back and through several gardens to the stash of discarded presents. Sherlock pulled on his gloves and dug through, pulling out box after similar-sized box until he found what he was looking for. From inside the carton for a kitchen mixer emerged a large, floppy soft toy with the ears of a rabbit and the body of a red, raccoon-like beast. It appeared to have a lion’s tail, and embedded in its chest was some sort of tv screen. It was like a Teletubby on LSD, which, in John’s opinion, was a feat of imaginative horror.

“What the hell is that?”

“A toy for an infant, John.” Sherlock flipped over the tag to show him. “Nap-A-Lodeon.”

“What?”

“Handmade, but professionally-so. Small business. Like the scarf I found on the sidewalk, made somewhere we can visit. That’s what we have to discover next.”

“No, _what_?”

“I really have been sidetracked, John. I should have seen this from the beginning. The thief wasn’t looking for the dolls. He was looking for _these_.”

“I don’t remember—“

“They all look different, John. But there has been one in every burglary. I just didn’t see it because I was so sure it was the dolls.” Finally Sherlock stopped and looked at John for reaction. A connection burned between them for a few seconds: the light of epiphany, the joy of shared exultation. A break in the case.

“You theorised ahead of the facts,” John said, and he let a hint of a smile creep into his voice.

“I did,” said Sherlock, but instead of sounding angry with himself, he just gave John a strange smile. “Christmas makes fools of us all.”

John picked up his humour and ran with it. “Come on you prince of cheer,” he said, affection burning warm in his chest. “Let’s go explain to Peterson where we’ve gone.”


	4. Soft Machine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was Christmas, and the three of them had planned to celebrate together, and John had been looking forward to that more than he’d wanted to admit. But now, with Sherlock acting bizarre, John wasn’t sure he wanted to deal with it. It was like having a fever, in a way; things were tinted with a haze of unreality, and their connexion was running hot and cold and all the things in between, and John just wanted it to be comfortable again. He wanted a cozy den of warm, their home in the middle of the December chill, and instead… Instead he got _this_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So very many thanks to betas Wearitcounts and BillieThePoet for taking time out of their schedules to give me some much-needed backup.

According to the victims’ lists there was only one place where the toys were sold, a medium-sized independent shop in Chelsea between a salon and a yoga studio. When they arrived, no one was in the shop except the shopkeeper behind the till, who was leaned back watching telly. When the bell over the door rang out, John caught a glimpse of a starlet’s magnificent jewelled neckline before the proprietor slammed the telly over to ice hockey.

They strode in, and John stood back to watch Sherlock sham normal. It used to be fodder for entertainment, but these days it caused a strange flicker of discomfort to set up under his skin, reminding him just how fluently Sherlock could lie.

“Hi,” Sherlock said, and he leaned on the counter with one elbow. He put down the animatronic robot dog he’d snagged on the way up to the counter. “Just this, please.” 

The shopkeeper started ringing him up. “I always wondered about these,” he said. “Not sure what the fuss is about. Might as well get a real dog. But kids like ‘em.”

“Probably an easier sell with their parents,” John piped up.

The shopkeeper—Bill, according to his name tag—gave him a wan smile. “Probably.”

“Listen, I was hoping you’d help me,” Sherlock said smoothly. He signed the receipt and handed it back. “I have a question about one of your products.”

“Shoot.”

“Well, it’s…” Sherlock pointed to a display of Nap-a-Lodeons on a table near the far left aisle. “Those things. Can you tell me some more about them?”

Bill looked at him warily. “What do you want to know?”

“Oh, nothing much,” Sherlock said, brushing his concern aside. “I was just wondering if you had any record who bought them, or knew more about, say—“

“Oh for fuck’s sake.” Bill folded his arms. “What the hell is it with you people?”

Sherlock blinked. “You people?”

“Yeah. You’re the second person in here this week, pestering me about those damn things. Your friend was in here twice. What the fuck is going on?”

Sherlock stood up straight. “Tell me about our friend.”

“I’m not going to tell you shit. You guys are really pissing me off. Take your robot dog and go.”

“Describe him to me.”

“Go, or I’m calling the cops. This is harassment. I’m not going to give you details about my customers, or where they live, or—“

“Sir,” John stepped in, “we aren’t working with anyone but the police. Was the other person in here a cop?”

Bill shot him a look. “You should know.”

“We really don’t,” said Sherlock.

“Blond kid. About sixteen?” Bill pointed at John. “Your younger brother, I bet.” Sherlock turned to blink at John, who shrugged. “Listen, clear out. I’m done talking about this.”

John stepped in closer and tried to placate him. “I’m sorry, sir, but please understand. We’re working with the police to—“

“If you’re cops, show me your IDs.”

“We’re not—“ John started, but Sherlock cut in.

“—Supposed to be flashing these around too liberally, but…” He pulled out a black wallet and quickly flashed Bill its contents before tucking it back into his pocket. “DI Gregory Lestrade.” John almost choked. 

“Grown your hair out, then? And dyed it.”

“Undercover. You know how it is.”

Bill blinked at him and then nodded with a jerking movement. “R-right.”

“So.” Sherlock glanced around as if taking Bill into his confidence. “Can you tell me where they came from, if you can’t tell me who they were sold to?” If John’s ears weren’t mistaken, a bit of Lestrade’s gravelly tone had entered Sherlock’s voice, and his accent was more Londoner. John stifled the urge to bury his face in his hands.

“Er, I don’t know if…”

“Come on.” Sherlock winked at him. “Settle a bet, at least.”

“A bet?”

“Yeah. I bet my partner here a fiver that the toys were made in China, and he says no. Who’s right?”

“You owe him five quid, then.”

“Oh, do I?” John wondered when Sherlock was going to start purring.

“Yeah, they’re made right here in Chelsea, actually. Bit of a cottage industry. We’re the only ones who sell them, as a matter of fact.”

“Really.”

“Pay your partner, Inspector.”

John grinned, a weak substitute for the laughter he felt bubbling up, and held out his hand. “That’ll be five pounds, Lestrade.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sherlock said, digging into his wallet and handing it over. His vowels were becoming more and more like Lestrade’s the more they stood there.

“Listen, you’re cops, yeah? I didn’t get a good feeling off that kid. Not at all.”

Sherlock examined his face. “What did you see?”

“It’s not so much… I mean, I didn’t see anything, per se, but it was just this…feeling I got, you know? Like he was nervous.”

“Describe him.”

“Like I said. Blond. Teenager. Spots. Big mouth.”

“ _Interesting._ ” Sherlock’s eyes narrowed. John didn’t understand why that seemed interesting instead of suspicious: it clearly was their thief, trying to figure out his next job. “Can you give me the address of the toymaker?” Sherlock added.

Bill sighed. “Yeah, yeah, okay.” He rummaged around in a drawer next to the till. “Listen, you’ll look into that teenager, yeah?” He pulled out a brightly-coloured business card and handed it over.

“I guarantee it,” Sherlock said. He plucked the card with two fingers and scanned for the address.

“Absolutely,” John said, and came forward to shake Bill’s hand. “Thank you, Mr…?”

“Rachman,” Bill said. “And you’re…”

“His partner. Detective…Gregson.”

Bill gave him a curt smile. “Okay, Detective. Well, sorry for my outburst earlier. I didn’t know you two were cops.”

“Plain-clothes,” John said, trying to look helpful and trustworthy and any other adjectives he thought might help them pass as cops. “We understand.”

“Come on, Charlie,” said Sherlock, grabbing his carrier bag and heading for the door.

“Hey, keep me posted, eh?” Bill called after him.

John walked backward. “Will do. Thank you for your help.”

“Er, you’re welcome…”

And then John and Sherlock were safely outside, and John had to duck into the lee of a doorway and have a bit of a giggle before he could walk any further. “I thought you got rid of that thing.”

“Good thing Lestrade and Gregson won’t hear of it,” Sherlock said, chuckling next to John. The sound was familiar, comforting, and made the laughter settle warm in his bones.

“Because they can’t stand each other?” said John, about to break down into a fresh spate of giggles.

“They would be quite cranky, I think, to find out they were partners.”

John did laugh at that, and Sherlock seemed to laugh harder at John’s laughter, and it was a full few minutes before the hilarity cleared enough that John could straighten up and catch his breath. “Can you imagine the bickering?”

“I’d like not to, thanks.”

“And it wouldn’t even be the good kind.”

“No.” Sherlock was looking down at him with that peculiar half-smile he did, the one that looked like fondness and amusement, the one that always wrapped around John like physical warmth. “No, it wouldn’t.”

John giggled nervously and looked over the road and down the pavement and even at the passing cars—anywhere but into Sherlock’s eyes. His stomach fluttered.

“Right.” Sherlock threaded the carrier bag over his wrist and stuck both hands in his pockets. “Shall we to Evelyn Oakshott, 117 Brixton Road?”

John gestured to the bag. “Why did you buy that, anyway?”

“I needed to buy his willingness to answer questions.”

“Well that definitely worked.”

Sherlock coughed a quiet laugh. “Yes.”

“But no, really, why did you buy that thing specifically?”

“The robot?” Sherlock lifted it up and stared at the bag as if he could look straight through it to the toy inside. “It was closest thing that pleased me.”

“What are you going to name it?”

Sherlock furrowed his brow at John. “ _Name_ it?”

“Yeah, you have to name a dog.”

“It’s a robot, John.”

“Doesn’t matter.” John grinned at him. “You have to name it anyway.”

“Do I?” Sherlock smirked his smile back.

“Absolutely.”

“Fine. Gladstone.”

“You’re going to name it after the store.”

“His name is on the bag already.”

John laughed, and his gaze was transfixed by the sparkle in Sherlock’s eyes. _This feels like flirting. What the fuck._

“So you always name things by what’s written on the bag?”

“My first violin was called Royal Mail.”

John kept giggling.

“And I have to stop myself from calling you ‘Mark Spencer.’”

“ _Stop_ ,” John said, and dragged Sherlock away from the doorway by his elbow. He felt Sherlock’s body heat, the texture of his coat, the solidity of his arm, and reluctantly let go once they approached the stand of taxis. There was an unfamiliar craving in his bones, to lean against Sherlock in the car and be comforted by his presence, but just as soon as John recognised it he quashed it down. It sat uncomfortably in his gut, though, even after they’d gotten in and were speeding off to Oakshott’s house, and it didn’t go away for what seemed like an awfully long time.

* * *

The workshop for Soft Machine was, conveniently for Oakshott, a wing of her house. She opened the door wearing pyjama bottoms, a t-shirt, and a perplexed expression on her face.

“Can I help you?”

This time Sherlock was ready. He flashed Lestrade’s badge at her and gave her a plummy smile. “Hello, Evelyn Oakshott?

Her eyes narrowed. “Yes?”

“I’m Detective Inspector Lestrade and this is Sergeant Charles Gregson, with the Metropolitan Police. I’d like a word.” His accent was even more like Lestrade’s than it had been at the toy store. John wasn’t sure he was going to make it through this without laughing.

“Er.” She looked at both of them. “Sure.”

She stepped back to let them through to her workshop. It was a large space, so full of fibre John’s nose immediately began to itch. There were bags of stuffing stacked along one wall, boxes of dismembered stuffed toys, and racks upon racks of folded fun fur. In the corner, John spotted a desk with felt cartoon eyes scattered across it, as well as the detritus from some electronics project. There were several marionettes and other sorts of puppets hanging from the ceiling. It smelled of hot glue and, somehow, towels just pulled from a tumble dryer. “This is a…nice space…” John said, trying not to pull a face back at the Japanese mask staring at him from a near wall. To his right was a series of posters advertising local amateur dramatics productions, and a cork notice board on which were pinned invoices and supply lists and notes on scraps of paper. John let his gaze run over it.

Evelyn shrugged. “It’s a workshop. It gets the job done.”

“I see,” said John.

“Keeps fur from getting all over the house. That sh…stuff gets everywhere, if you don’t keep it contained.”

“Like a virus,” Sherlock said.

She blinked at him, but agreed. “Like a virus.” Sherlock didn’t look back, but instead was taking a turn about the room, nosing into everything. “Listen, can I help you?”

“What can you tell us about Gladstone’s?”

“It’s a…store. The toy store where I sell some of my work.”

“They’re the only place.”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t sell them personally?”

Evelyn held out her hands. “I’m not exactly set up to be a storefront,” she said. “Also, I don’t really like dealing with the public.”

“And understandably so,” said Sherlock.

She waited for Sherlock to say something else, but he seemed to be sidetracked poking through a stack of blue fur. “So…?” she prompted.

“Explain to me what a Nap-O-Lodeon is.”

They were soft toys, she explained, made to help infants sleep. They were the same size as an infant, cuddly but sturdy, with an internal electronic structure that could be removed for washing.

“You can put any video or sounds you want on there,” she said, pointing to the small screen on a finished toy’s stomach. “Flash drive. So you can record yourself speaking, or you could have…Yo Gabba Gabba playing. Whatever you want.”

Sherlock tilted his head and examined it closely. “And this is popular?”

“Well, I’m a one-woman operation, so I don’t know how popular it could get, but yeah. I sell them quickly.”

“And what’s with the…” He gestured at the grotesque pile of dismembered soft toys gathered in a gigantic bin to his left.

“Oh, I do a line of them made from recycled toys I get from, I don’t know, various places, charity shops.” She looked around at her mess and shrugged. “…Sanitised, of course.”

“Of course,” Sherlock said as he started investigating the bin.

“Er,” John said. She didn’t seem like the type to be slipping drugs into kids toys, but maybe she’d encountered a toy into which someone else had stuffed contraband. “Do you ever find interesting things inside the toys?”

She furrowed her brow at him. “No. I mean, I think someone had stuck a used sweet into one of them once, but that’s hardly interesting.”

“Hardly,” Sherlock echoed. He examined her face, then ducked down to investigate under her work tables.

“Look, could you— You’re making me uncomfortable,” she said.

Sherlock stood and narrowed his eyes at her. “Am I.”

“Well…yeah.” She looked to John as if for back-up, but apparently realised quite quickly she wasn’t likely to get any help from his quarter. “What are you looking for, anyway?”

“Nothing,” John said.

“Drugs,” Sherlock said.

She shook her head is if she couldn’t believe it. “Did you say _drugs_?”

“Yep.” Sherlock popped the ‘p’, but then he stood up. “I think we need to reevaluate,” he said to John.

“You don’t have a warrant,” Evelyn said. She didn’t seem upset so much as bewildered.

“You’re right. I don’t.” Sherlock didn’t seem bothered by it at all, of course. He examined the hanging puppets.

“If you don’t have questions for me, I’m going to ask you to please… _get out_.”

“Who has access to this space?”

“Er, anyone. My sister and her son, and my boyfriend. I keep it locked when I’m not in here, though.”

“Do any of them live with you as well?”

“My sister and nephew, yeah.”

“And do they—“

Just then the door from the house opened and a blonde teenager walked in, eating an apple. “Hey Aunt Eve, I need to—“ He stopped short and his eyes widened. “Oh.”

“Get out of here with that. You know better,” Evelyn said. “No food.” She turned to Sherlock. “Speak of the devil.”

Sherlock dove for the boy but John got to him first.

“What the fuck?! OW.” John had the kid’s arm halfway up his back, his front pressed against a wall of fun fur. He spluttered as if he’d got a mouthful of it.

“Stop moving and it won’t have to hurt,” John growled into his ear.

“EXCUSE ME.” Evelyn said. “What the hell is going on here?”

“Who is this?” Sherlock asked her. “What was he doing today from 7am onward? What about the day before yesterday, the 22nd?”

“Ask him. He’s standing right there.” She folded her arms. “Jensen, talk to the cops. Now.”

“I didn’t _do_ anything! _Ow._ ”

“Stop struggling,” John said.

“This is police brutality. I don’t have to take this!” Jensen’s voice began to get a bit squeaky toward the end.

“Oh, Jensen, just answer the question,” Evelyn said, sounding more frustrated than anything else.

“I was at Denys’s today. And the day before yesterday.”

“All day?” said Sherlock.

“Yeah.”

“Can anyone confirm that?”

“Ugh.” Jensen wriggled and John tightened his grip. “Yeah. Him and his mum. We were watching fucking Christmas films.”

“Watch your mouth,” Evelyn said.

Sherlock pulled out his mobile. “Tell me the number.”

“I don’t—ow—I don’t know it. It’s just in my phone.”

“Is your phone on you?”

“In my pocket. God let _go_.”

“John.”

At the nod from Sherlock John let go, but he went to stand near the door into the house anyway to block his easiest escape.

“Dial the number then hand it to me,” Sherlock said. “What’s the surname?”

“Pamplona.” Jensen prodded the keypad and handed Sherlock the mobile, looking more than a little skittish.

Sherlock glanced at the screen before holding the phone to his ear. “Snooky Bear?” he said to Jensen.

“Shut up,” he said. Evelyn smacked him on the back of the head.

Sherlock stood up straight. “Hello, to whom am I speaking?”

“What happened to his accent?” Evelyn hissed to John. John shook his head and shrugged. Sherlock had apparently decided sounding his usually-posh self would get better results. “You two are the weirdest cops I’ve ever met.”

“You don’t know the half,” John said.

Sherlock was verifying that he was talking to Denys. “My name is Detective Inspector Lestrade, and—yes, I am calling from Jensen’s phone. Yes, he’s right here. I’d like you to describe to me your activities yesterday and on the 22nd.” He blinked at Jensen. “And your mother can confirm that, should we need her to? Yes, that’s fine. No.” Sherlock sighed, then held the phone out to Jensen. “He wants to make sure you’re still alive.”

John snorted. Jensen plucked the mobile from Sherlock, looked round at all of the adults, and hunched his back to the room as if to hide from them. “I’m fine,” John easily heard him say. “You told him about— Ah. No, that’s cool. That’s…cool. Yeah, I’ll phone you later.” He hung up and stuffed the mobile back in his pocket, then turned around. He was bright red.

“Basil Brush Christmas marathon?” Sherlock said, raising an eyebrow.

“Shut up,” Jensen said again, and once more Evelyn smacked him upside the head.

Sherlock narrowed his eyes at Jensen, then at Evelyn, then looked all round him at the workshop.

“I think we’re finished, John.”

“I thought you said his name was Charles?”

Ignoring her, Sherlock swept for the door. “Nickname,” John said with a shrug.

“So that’s it?” said Evelyn. “Come in here, annoy me, rough up my nephew, and go?”

“Just another service we provide, here at the Metropolitan Police,” John said, feeling sassy, and he followed Sherlock out the door. He caught up with him on the pavement, where Sherlock was extricating his Gladstone’s Toys bag from inside a row of hedges.

“Your tin dog’s okay, then?” John said.

“Shut up, John.”

John smacked him, just as Evelyn had done to Jensen. Sherlock scowled and rubbed vigorously at his head. “You’re not going to make that a habit.”

“Never know. I could,” John said, smirking.

“Please don’t.”

“So now what?” asked John. The sun was low in the sky, blazing orange and nearly touching the horizon, and their shadows stretched over the road.

“Now we wait,” Sherlock said.

John nearly tripped over his feet. “What?” He trotted to catch up. “No, Sherlock, we can’t wait. Christmas is tomorrow. We can’t just _wait_ for him to make another move. We need to find the right kid.”

“It’s nearly sundown, John. People are likely to be home. It doesn’t fit the pattern for this case; the burglar doesn’t want to encounter anyone, so he chooses times when the house is empty.”

“Which, it being Christmas…”

“Means our thief is probably at home, preparing for a large meal tomorrow and deciding whether or not he can get away with having an extra-large sherry.”

“Your childhood Christmases were very different to my childhood Christmases.”

“No doubt.”

“Hey, who’s having class issues now?”

“Not issues, John.”

“Making distinctions, then.”

“I need to find a place to think.”

“And on the road doesn’t fit the bill, hm?”

Sherlock got them out onto a busier street and started flagging down a cab.

“So, where to, then?” said John.

“Home.”

“What, seriously? You don’t want to interview anyone else?”

“I’d like some quiet, John.”

John stared at the side of his face. “Are you okay?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“ _Yes._ ”

“Fine.” John sighed as Sherlock managed to wave down a cab. “I’ll leave you alone, then.”

Sherlock didn’t dignify that with a response.

* * *

Sherlock cloistered himself in the bath as soon as they got home. John heard relative silence for over an hour, marked periodically with the drain being unstoppered and the tap running as Sherlock recharged the hot water.

_You’re gonna look like a prune,_ John thought, settled in his chair and reading a book. He smiled to himself, affection tightening his throat. Sherlock hadn’t said much on the way home, and John remained jittery about the burglaries, but there was something about when Sherlock stopped to take care of himself these days that always made John feel good regardless of the overarching situation. The sound of Sherlock splashing as he shifted in the bath served as an audible reminder how much he had changed.

Eventually Sherlock toddled out of the bath in his dressing gown and a pair of socks. He shivered as he hit the ambient temperature of the flat. The motion caught John’s attention for a moment before he went back to his book. “If you’re cold, put some more clothes on.” He turned the page, then something twigged. He watched the way Sherlock was walking. “What’s wrong with your feet?”

“Nothing’s wrong with them.”

“Why are you walking like that?”

“I’m just walking, John.”

“No, you’re…” John set his book aside and got up to accost Sherlock as he lowered himself to the sofa. “Let me see.”

“I’m fine, Jo—“ Sherlock hissed when John stabbed a finger at the lower arch of his foot. “ _Ow._ ”

“You sound like Jensen.” John settled down on the other side of the sofa and stripped off Sherlock sock to reveal to rather several nasty-looking blisters on near his arch and on his heel. “Sherlock.”

“They’re fine.”

“They hurt, you child.”

“They’re fine.”

“I could tell from the way you were walking. Let me see your other foot.”

“It’s fine…” Sherlock said, but he held up his foot for John anyway.

John studied them both. “Well, I’m not sure if the soaking did you any favours, but you should keep these clean and dry. I thought you said your shoes were too high quality to be affected by—“

“They are.”

“Obviously not.” John prodded near one of the blisters. “You should wear different shoes for the next few days.”

“But those are my shoes. I always wear those shoes.”

“You have other ones. What, are you five?”

Sherlock pouted. The effect was rather scuttled by the way his skin was one long, gorgeous stripe all the way up from the base of his sternum, and the way he shivered with a chill.

“Oh, for… Stay here,” John ordered. “I’m going to get some stuff for those, since I don’t have a hope in hell that you’ll let them alone. And I’m getting you some goddamn clothes; it’s freezing in here.”

“Light a fire.”

“You light a fire. No. Wait, seriously don’t stand up. We haven’t swept in ages and I shudder to think what sort of grit might scrape those open.”

“You could sweep.”

“So could you.” John raised an eyebrow at him as he left for Sherlock’s bedroom. 

“Get me the grey ones!” Sherlock yelled as John dug through for some pyjama bottoms. He grabbed the first bottoms and t-shirt he could find regardless of colour and stopped in the bath for some first-aid supplies.

When he got back out to the sitting room Sherlock was paging through John’s book. “This is horrific.”

“It’s a bestseller.” John took it from him and chucked it back onto his chair.

“People are idiots.”

“So I’ve been told.” He shoved Sherlock back against the arm of the sofa and started cutting up bits of gauze.

“I’m not going to be able to walk with that on my feet.”

“You should have thought of that before you stuck them back into wet shoes again.”

“They’re _my shoes_.”

“I really don’t understand what that has to do with it, Sherlock.”

“I adore those shoes.”

The stubbornness was starting to hurt John’s brain which, considering this was Sherlock, was impressive. “I’m not saying you have to throw them out, Sherlock, I was just saying…let them dry before they rub all the skin off.”

“I shouldn’t have to.”

“Oh, for f…” John growled. “Sit back.” He pulled Sherlock’s feet into his lap and started padding the blisters with the gauze, hoping to hell he could manage to keep Sherlock from breaking them until they reabsorbed. The last thing he needed was this overgrown child walking on infected wounds. “What do you do when those shoes get wet in the rain?”

“They don’t.”

“Are you our lord and saviour?”

Sherlock blinked. “Pardon?”

John shook his head. “Never mind.” He attacked the blister on the back of Sherlock’s ankle. “What I’m wondering is how you haven’t had this problem before.”

“I’m not ordinarily up to my ankles in water for most of a night, John, walking up and down the street.”

“You were walking the same street all night?”

“Of course not. I varied my path.”

“I was going to say. No wonder the neighbour called the police on us.”

Sherlock hummed a dry laugh, crossed his arms, and lay back against the arm of the sofa. He adjusted his free foot so the sole was pressing against the corduroy of John’s trousers. He hummed again and rubbed the foot gently against the inside of John’s thigh.

“You do know that you can’t transfer your blisters to me through touch, right?” John said, finishing the last blister on that foot.

“Mmm. Feels nice.”

John rolled his eyes, but internally he was hoping to god his body wouldn’t react to the intimate touch. He snipped the piece of tape and set the foot down. “Next.” Sherlock lifted his other foot for treatment and buried the other one against John’s thigh. This one was even closer to his groin, and John wanted to grit his teeth together.

“It doesn’t feel nearly as nice with all that dressing all over it.”

“That’s not really my problem, is it.”

Sherlock blew out the breath that meant he was bored to tears and he let his head loll back off the arm of the sofa. “Are you done yet?”

“I just started.”

After a minute, Sherlock said, “What about now?”

“Jesus christ, Sherlock, I just—“ John noticed the sparkle in Sherlock’s eye. “You twat.”

Sherlock grinned and jiggled his foot in between John’s legs. “This is nice.”

This time John did grit his teeth. “You’ve said.”

“Warm.”

_It’s warm. Between my legs,_ John thought. He grunted with frustration as something in his head, tethered by a fine wire, snapped. “Are you just winding me up?”

Sherlock tilted his head. “Winding you up?”

“You. All this.” John waved a hand at him. “You’ve been messing me about for the last few days, and I don’t know what’s going on any more, Sherlock, I really don’t. First the walk in the snow, and then you’re cross at the drop of a hat for no reason I can discern, and then you get angry with me for not recognising that this totally bizarre behaviour is to do with Christmas, and I just…I have no idea what’s going on. It’s _warm between my legs_?”

Sherlock blinked at him for a moment then looked away. “It’s cold in here. You should light a fire.”

John growled. “ _You_ light the fire.” He snipped the last bit of tape, lifted Sherlock’s feet from his lap, stood, and dropped them onto the sofa. “I’m going to go take a very long, hot shower.”

“John—“

“No, forget about it. I’m cold, and I’m tired, and I’m hungry. Try not to hurt yourself in the next twenty minutes because I’ve almost used up the last of the tape.”

He stormed toward the bath—toward steam, and solitude, and escape from any of the emotions Sherlock was stirring up. _Fuck._ It was Christmas, and the three of them had planned to celebrate together, and John had been looking forward to that more than he’d wanted to admit to himself. But now, with Sherlock acting bizarre, John wasn’t sure he wanted to deal with it. It was like having a fever, in a way; things were tinted with a haze of unreality, and their connexion was running hot and cold and all the things in between, and John just wanted it to be comfortable again. He wanted a cozy den of warm, their home in the middle of the December chill, and instead… Instead he got _this_.

John stood in the shower as long as he could possibly stand it. Eventually his ire melted slightly, and he admitted that rarely, if ever, had Christmas gone according to plan, and that this shouldn’t really be bothering him as much as it was, and maybe there was some deeper underlying reason why Sherlock was acting so erratically these past few days. Perhaps it really did trouble him to make an effort. Perhaps there was something deep in his past that John was unaware of which was causing him to be such…such a goddamn _prat_ , and why didn’t he just fucking _talk to John_ about whatever the hell it was that was…

Frustration flooded John’s system and he banged a fist on the tile. The pain was centring. He half expected Sherlock to check on him, but realised that was about as likely as Sherlock cooking a Christmas dinner and handing out crackers.

Eventually the water started to go cold. With great reluctance John got out of the shower and bundled up in a towelling robe, and took a deep breath in preparation for the wall of cold out in the corridor. He opened the door, and…

Well, it was still cold. But less cold. And it smelled amazing. John stood, head tilted, and tried to process what was going on. “Sherlock?”

“In here,” Sherlock said from the kitchen. John found him standing at the stove, stirring a giant pot.

“What are you doing?”

In answer, Sherlock turned from the stove and handed him a mug. John sniffed it. “Spiced wine?” Sherlock picked up a second mug and pushed a hand between John’s shoulder blades, wordlessly directing him toward the sitting room, where a fire blazed in the hearth and fairy lights bathed the room in a soft, white glow.

“Oh,” John said. Sherlock had set their chairs closer together, with the table between them, and on it was a platter of bread and cheese and olives and, of course, some of Mrs. Hudson’s minced pies. “Oh,” John said again.

“Sit down, John, I didn’t replicate London Bridge in Twiglets.”

“This is…huh.” John sat and looked around, unable to keep the smile from creeping across his face. “This is really nice, Sherlock.”

Sherlock waved that away with careful nonchalance. John smiled warmly at him anyway, not buying it. It was as good of an apology as John figured he was going to get.

The fire was blazingly warm on the soles of John’s feet as he stretched them out to the fire. “So. What have you been thinking about the case?”

“Hm?”

“Don’t pretend you haven’t got a plan.”

“I don’t have a plan, John.”

“Bull.”

“I’m hoping that spending an evening away will give my brain the chance to re-contextualise the information we do have.”

“You think you’re missing something.”

“Of course I am.”

“Hmm.” Suspicion tugged at the periphery of John’s consciousness. Ordinarily Sherlock would be out there in the world searching for more information, and certainly not sitting around in front of a fire with a plate of nibbles and a mug of spiced wine. Was he simply tired of walking around on blistered feet? It seemed unlikely, given the sorts of wounds Sherlock was known to shake off and move past in the service of a case. 

Then again, John thought, if it meant he got to be comfortable and enjoy a bit of Christmas cheer, perhaps he shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

“Do you have any idea what could be in them?” John asked. “Drugs does seem to be more likely now. You could fit more drugs in a stuffed toy than a doll.”

“Hm.”

“Or spies. Maybe spies were trying to pass along information using the flash drive.”

“Spies.”

“It fits the pattern. You should ask Mycroft.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes, leaned over to pick up a pie, and shoved it at John. “Eat this, please.”

“So I’ll stop talking?”

When Sherlock rested back in his chair John chuckled at him. He did eat the pie, however.

Contentment settled over John as he and Sherlock sat there in silence, each lost in his own thoughts, the crackling fire a suitable soundtrack for quiet contemplation.

Eventually John spoke. “What if he makes a last-ditch effort to get whatever it is?”

“I doubt he would break in when people are in the house, John. I’ve said this.”

“But what if he does?”

“Then we’ll have more evidence to look over in the morning.”

“Horrible Christmas if he gets caught. Some kid coming out to investigate Santa Claus and seeing a stranger in their home stealing the gifts.”

“Hm.”

“What a Grinch.”

“Hm?”

“Never mind.” Not for the first time, John felt like he was so much noise, buzzing round Sherlock’s head. “Do you want me to go?”

For some reason, that caused Sherlock to look at him sharply. “No.”

“I mean, do you want me to leave you alone.”

“No, John. Why do you think I set this up for you?”

“For me, huh?” John smiled.

“Well, it certainly wasn’t for my benefit,” said Sherlock, stretching his legs out toward the fire and appearing to melt into his chair.

“Except maybe the pies.”

Sherlock barely moved. He turned his head sideways just enough to slant John a smile. “Perhaps the pies.”

John grinned, affection tightening his throat. “I thought as much.”

They sat back for a while longer, and then John saw movement out of the corner of his eye. Sherlock had unfurled a hand in his direction and was extending it toward him.

With a shock of adrenaline John’s stomach churned and his heart began to pound high in his throat. He didn’t breathe. He didn’t move. He couldn’t. This was more than an incidental movement; this was intentional, a palpable gesture of connexion across the small bit of space between their chairs. John stared into the fire, brain spinning, when suddenly the penny dropped and he knew, with a certainty down to his marrow, what Sherlock had been stumbling to get through to him over the last few days. This was never his area, emotion, and Sherlock was bound to have some trouble navigating his own feelings while still deducing John’s. Small wonder he’d been frustrated. He’d been reaching out across the gulf, trying to establish a bridge between them, grasping for a change of relationship, and time after time he’d failed. This time, though, he went for something simpler. This time he just…reached out.

John considered what Sherlock offered, and with a surprising amount of calm, he took it.

And sighed. Sherlock’s hand was warm, soft, calloused, familiar, comforting… It was as if nothing were changing with the contact. John would have expected nervousness from this sort of intimacy, but instead it felt natural as breath, an organic extension of their closeness. John melted back into his seat and let himself feel the ache of love. He squeezed Sherlock’s hand, and Sherlock squeezed back.

They sat there quiet for quite a long time, hand in hand. John’s stomach rumbled but he ignored it, instead sipping his wine and enjoying the comforting touch and tilting the soles of his feet at the fire. He let himself be hypnotised by the flames. Eventually Sherlock pulled his mobile out of his pocket and started prodding it one-handed. It made John smile. Neither let go.

“Oh,” Sherlock suddenly said.

John sat up. Still, he didn’t drop Sherlock’s hand. “What.”

“ _Oh._ ”

“What, Sherlock?”

Sherlock turned to him and glimmer of joy that lit up his face was more mesmerising than the fire. “I know.”

John blinked at him. “You know what?”

“I know what was in the toys, John.”

John had no idea. “What?”

In answer, Sherlock held out his mobile. It was a news story about the gem which had gone missing, the infamous Blue Cabochon which had been stolen from the Mandarin Oriental earlier in the week. It had been beating at the periphery of John’s consciousness the entire time, but hadn’t really gotten through.

“The Blue Cabochon? Why? How?”

“Think about, John. It disappears about the same time the burglaries begin. The hotel is near the workshop. Someone there knows what’s going on.” Sherlock put the phone back in his pocket and hopped up from his chair, then used their joined hands to pull John up out of his. To John’s shock, he laid a smacking kiss on John’s mouth and tugged him toward the landing. “Get dressed. Let’s go.”

“Sherlock. _Sherlock_.” John resisted being thrown up the stairs and instead chased Sherlock down the hall. “Sherlock, you have to call the police in on this. That gem is—Sherlock, that gem is priceless. I read about it in the papers.”

Sherlock huffed, but at least he stopped barrelling toward his bedroom. “If I call Peterson, will you go upstairs and get changed?”

John folded his arms. “Do it now. In front of me.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes but dialled. “I wasn’t going to go without calling the cops, John.”

“Sure you were. You wanted to recover the gem all by yourself just to prove you could. You probably would have kept it like a trophy.”

Again Sherlock rolled his eyes, but then Peterson must have picked up. “Peterson, I know who— What?” He listened for a bit, and then something in the set of his shoulders sagged. “Yes. Yes, _of course_ we’ll be there,” he spat, and he looked at John. “Where? Fine. Yes, fine.” He stabbed his phone off and raised an eyebrow. “John, you might want to get out your phone and record something.”

Confused, John pointed to the bath. “My phone’s in my trousers. What’s this about?”

“I’m about to say something I don’t say very often.”

“What?”

“ _I was wrong_.”


	5. Bird of Paradise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peterson and John nearly collided with his back but Sherlock steered a wide berth and stalked over to what had surprised him. Underneath a streetlamp, bright in the sodium-coloured moonlight, was an eviscerated soft toy. As Sherlock stepped toward it a gust of wind drifted some of the stuffing along the pavement like snow.
> 
> “Well, I guess we’re definitely sure they wanted something,” John said.
> 
> “What were they trying to get from it? _Information_?” said Peterson.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wearitcounts and BillieThePoet are fantastic betas, fun betas, and I appreciate their help immensely.

Sherlock _was_ wrong, John found out as they rode over to the sixth house: night-time or not, the burglar had struck again.

This time it was on the ground floor of a estate flat, the haste of the thing illustrated by the glass scattered in and out the window. A four-year-old in a coat and footie pyjamas was wrapped round her father’s torso with her face pressed to his shoulder. She shivered and he tried to wrap his jacket around her.

“Can we go in soon?” he asked one of the passing PCs as John and Sherlock walked up. He looked knackered. “We just had a three hour drive from her gramma’s and she really needs to go to bed. Santa will be here soon, won’t he, sweetheart? And then Mommy and Little Bean are coming over.” Her arms tightened around him.

“Soon,” Peterson said, coming out of the building. “Any moment now.”

“Has someone gone through the bins?” Sherlock asked.

“No,” said Peterson. He turned to the poor guy, who was murmuring something in his daughter’s ear. “Where are your bins?”

“Oh, they’re tough to get to, round back. I can show you.” One of the PCs stepped in to hold the little one, but her dad shook his head. “No, I’ve got her, thanks.” He led them down the pavement, through a breezeway and down the second side of the building, then turned right again. And stopped. “Oh.”

Peterson and John nearly collided with his back but Sherlock steered a wide berth and stalked over to what had surprised him. Underneath a streetlamp, bright in the sodium-coloured moonlight, was an eviscerated soft toy. As Sherlock stepped toward it a gust of wind drifted some of the stuffing along the pavement like snow.

“Well, I guess we’re definitely sure they wanted something,” John said.

“What were they trying to get from it? _Information_?” said Peterson, then mouthed sorry to the father, whose daughter was starting up a quiet fuss about the ‘poor aminal’.

Sherlock crouched down, pulling on his gloves, and began to poke through the mess. He prodded and disregarded the electronics from inside. “Are there lights near your bins?” he asked the dad.

“Not at the moment, actually. We keep asking them to be replaced, but—“

“And walking through the hedges to my right puts you out on the main road,” said Sherlock.

“Er, yes.”

“Excellent.” He stood and circled the carcass of the Nap-O-Lodeon. “She found the particular toy she was looking for, which suggests she had previous knowledge which of the unique animals held her reward. She searched through this mess in the light of the streetlamp, quickly found what she was looking for, and left.”

“She?” John said.

Peterson pulled out his phone and told the person at the other end to start canvassing for witnesses, then stopped. “Wait, she?”

“That won’t be necessary, Peterson. I know who it is.”

“Clearly,” John said.

“And furthermore, John, so do you.”

“I do?”

“Yes.” Sherlock strode up to John, stopped well within his personal space, and grinned. “You _do_.”

Between Sherlock’s proximity, the expression on his face, and his general air of glee, John’s heart began to race. Not Jensen, and probably not Evelyn, or the shopkeeper might have recognised her. There was one more person who seemed likely—someone who had access to the workshop, someone they hadn’t yet met. John put it together with a thrill; this time, he didn’t feel like an idiot. “It’s Jensen’s mother, isn’t it?” he said.

Sherlock leaned in close. John had a strange moment, a mixed flash of fear and excited expectation that Sherlock might kiss him. Instead he just licked his lips in an unconscious mirror of John’s gesture. “It’s his mother.”

* * *

It was late, but Peterson didn’t want to give her a chance to hide the Cabochon anywhere before they could get to it. John had the dubious honour of sitting in the back of another baking-hot cab and listening to Sherlock try not to jitter his way out of the car.

“If you get irritated with the driver not going any faster, I _will_ take action.”

Suddenly all Sherlock’s focus was on John’s face. “What sort of action?”

John blinked, then snorted with laughter at Sherlock’s assessing expression. “Er, what sort would you like?”

After a second, Sherlock chuckled and seemed to relax a touch. He reached over and took John’s hand. John slid his thumb along the seam of Sherlock’s glove.

“What are the chances she still has the gem?” John asked, sinking back into his seat and enjoying the comfort of Sherlock’s hand in his.

“Huge. She’s not a criminal. She doesn’t have the sort of connexions to fence it properly, so it will take some time.”

“She could hide it away from the house.”

“Without her sister knowing? I’m certain they were meant to spend Christmas Eve together. I suspect it was trouble enough sneaking out to steal it without anyone noticing.”

“And you’re certain it’s not Jensen?”

Sherlock made a rude noise. “You saw him. Didn’t have enough coordination to carry it off, never mind the fact that if he had been loitering around to case the buildings, someone somewhere would have called the cops.”

“Like they did for us.”

“And we had only been there for a few minutes. Jensen would have needed significantly more than that to get his bearings. No, his mother had the means and the opportunity, I’m certain of it.”

“What about the shopkeeper? He said—“

“Young men played women on the stage for years. The reverse often can work just as well.”

“So she _framed her son_?”

Sherlock snorted. “I doubt that even crossed her mind.”

“You think she just didn’t want to be identified.”

“I think she’s a lot cleverer at disguise than her family give her credit for.”

* * *

Not a creature was stirring when Sherlock, John, and the rest of the police pulled up to Brixton Rd. Or, rather, they might have been asleep when they arrived, but they didn’t stay that way for long. Lights flicked on up and down the row of houses at the sound of sirens blazing. _Silent Night indeed._ John felt sorry for the chaos about to fall on Jensen’s world the night before Christmas.

For once, Sherlock let the officials do their work. Shocked, John stood back with him until they’d gained entrance. Sherlock squeezed John’s shoulder before he pressed through to encounter Evelyn, Jensen, and a slight, blonde woman of medium height standing perplexed in the sitting room.

“Start in the bedrooms,” Sherlock said to the team searching the house. He turned to the woman who was, presumedly, the thief. She held herself well but her eyes were wide with fear. “Sherlock Holmes,” he said. “And you are Candace Bantam.”

Candace’s eyes widened. She looked at her sister. “Who is this?”

Evelyn had her arms crossed and was giving both Sherlock and John a furious expression. “You said your name was Lestrade.”

“ _Holmes_ ,” Peterson frowned.

Sherlock waved that away. “Irrelevant.” He turned to speak Candace, but Evelyn interrupted him again.

“It’s not irrelevant to me. Are you even cops?”

“He’s a consulting detective,” John said.

“What are you, then?”

“I’m a—”

“Holmes,” Peterson said, saving John from having to explain to her that sometimes he really didn’t know. “I didn’t ask you on the case to impersonate an officer.”

“So you _are_ with the police?” said Evelyn, her eyes narrowed.

“Lestrade is a damn saint,” Peterson said to himself.

“But you said Jensen was innocent.”

“He is.” Sherlock stepped closer to Candace. “But your sister is not.”

There was a flicker of movement to Candace’s limbs, as if she had been about to bolt but had thought better of it. “How do you know my name?” she said, accepting her role in the conversation.

Sherlock waved the wonder aside. “Your name is on two posters in Evelyn’s studio. One for a bit of amateur dramatics, are we?”

“I don’t know why you’re bringing that up.” Candace asked him.

“Not very _good_ at amateur dramatics,” Sherlock snarked to John. “Tell me, Candace, you didn’t plan your heist well, did you? I’m not sure you thought about it in the slightest.”

Candace frowned. Next to her, Jensen was hugging himself and fraying the sleeve-ends of his hoodie with his fingertips. “This was the guy who thought it was me, mum.”

She looked sharply at him, then back to Sherlock. “Jensen didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“Ah,” said Sherlock. “But you did.” Her eyes were frosty. “You somehow got access to the gem at work, likely due to your job as…what, no, not front desk, you don’t have the hands for front desk…concierge? Yes, those skills at dramatics probably helped you get good tips, didn’t they? But not good enough. You knew the gem was there, everyone did. But you had access. And last…Thursday was your chance. You stole the gem, came home for…lunch, I’d bet, and slipped it inside one of the toys in the workshop. Then was back before anyone noticed you had gone, because that would certainly have implicated you, wouldn’t it? But no, you were lucky. Lucky until you got home and found out Evelyn had dropped off that lot of toys, yes?”

Evelyn was looking at her sister as if she were another creature entirely. “You must be joking.”

“Not joking at all, am I, Candace?” said Sherlock.

Candace looked at all of them, stone-faced. “I’d like a lawyer.”

“You’ll need one,” John said, finally getting in on it. “Because if the gem is in the house, we’re going to find it.” Candace’s overly-serene expression broke so she could shoot daggers at him.

“So then you had a problem,” Sherlock said. “How to get the gem back? If we examine your search history, how much are we going to find about methods of burglary? You can find anything on the internet, especially if particularly motivated. Which you would have been, wouldn’t you? You knew how to get around the security cameras, but it was only a matter of time before someone realised that you were missing from them for a while after the robbery. Did you come up with an alibi? Or still did you think you had a bit of time before someone asked you?”

“If someone found it in the animals,” Evelyn said, “They would have thought it was _me_. Did you even think of that?”

“She did remarkably well for someone caught wrong-footed almost from the start.” It was high praise, coming from Sherlock. “Luck was on her side. She found times to break in when no-one was in the houses, and of course no one called the police on the average, working-class blonde woman stopped outside on the pavement to case the next victim’s home—were you walking a dog? Pushing a pram? Whatever it was, people aren’t likely to view you with much suspicion are they? Lucky you again. The problem came at the end of the work day today. People were going to be home for Christmas. Not much chance of breaking into an empty house this time. Except! Ohh, you were very lucky. Tonight, the victim was at his parents’ house, and compared with the daytime getting in after dark was a doddle. Not many lights on, that side of the house.”

He turned to Evelyn. “How long was she gone?”

Evelyn blinked. “Gone?”

“Tonight. She must have missed some of the festivities.”

“She…” Evelyn looked at her sister. “Were you even helping out with that nativity play in the first place?”

“She was,” Jensen said. “I went with her one time. She said she wanted help rounding up all the kids or something.”

“I doubt she went tonight,” said Sherlock. “I think she was probably a bit busy with her last-ditch effort to secure the Cabochon before it was in the hands of the babies. I think even Candace would have balked before stealing a stuffed toy from an infant. Even if she was willing to implicate her own son as a criminal.”

Both Evelyn and Jensen looked at him. Finally, John saw Candace begin to wobble. “What are you talking about?” Evelyn said.

“Why do you think we thought it was your nephew?” Sherlock said, and turned to Candace. “I hope, for your sake, you disposed of the blond wig as soon as you’d finished with it.”

“Wig?” said Evelyn.

“She pretended to be a blond teenager asking about the toys at the shop,” John said. “She needed to find out where they’d gone.”

“Wait a minute, _WHAT_?” Jensen said, so loudly and with such voice that his voice squeaked. “That’s what you wanted the list for?!” Jensen was breathing like a steam train. “You wanted me to— Oh my god.” He covered his mouth with both hands, fear and anger and sadness making his eyes shine. “Oh my god,” he said, muffled.

John’s heart dropped to his stomach. Sherlock narrowed his gaze. “There’s always something.”

“I couldn’t get away from work again,” said Candace, tears starting to fall. “I needed to know, but I couldn’t… Jensen has been home from school, so I thought he could just…”

“You thought he could do some legwork for you,” Sherlock said. “Did you even think about his future if he’d been caught out?”

Candace didn’t answer, but the look on her face told the story.

“It’s lucky—“ John said, suddenly furious on Jensen’s behalf, “—it’s lucky for you your son had a solid alibi, or we’d have arrested him for the whole thing.”

“Please don’t,” she said. “He didn’t do anything wrong.”

“He was an accessory to your crime,” said Sherlock.

“Oh god,” Jensen said. He slunk, back against the wall, as far away from his mother as possible. He looked like he didn’t know what to do with his hands. As John watched, he suddenly made a break for it toward the front door. John easily grabbed him, but this time he didn’t have to pin him. The last gasp of his courage having gone, the poor kid was shaking like a leaf and seemed more inclined to curl up than to run.

John’s heart broke for him. “Sherlock…”

Sherlock looked at John, then at the kid, then at Candace. Then he stalked over to Peterson, who was stood beside John with conflicted expression on his face. “Peterson,” Sherlock said. “You put him in the system and he’s not going to make it. Look at him. If he doesn’t die in there, you might be creating a criminal for life out of a criminal who, technically, doesn’t even yet exist.”

Peterson stared at Jensen, whose face was bloodless. “He’s an accessory to— This is a massive—“

Sherlock grabbed his arm and looked briefly at John before ducking his head to speak closer to Peterson’s ear. “It’s Christmas,” John heard him say.

Peterson seemed to slump. He took them all in, jaw moving voicelessly, as if searching for the right thing to say. “I’ll think about it.” Then something in his eyes lit up. “Tell us where the gem is hid, and I’ll think about it.”

Candace wavered, for which John desperately wanted to slap her, but she relented with a jerk of her head. “The tree,” she said.

“The tree?” said Peterson.

Sherlock swirled around so quickly the tails of his coat brushed John’s shins. He stalked the tree for a moment. It was a mess of red and amber and blue, fake birds and glittering ribbon and gold filigree ornaments covering it from head to toe. John would have thought it was a handsome tree if he’d passed it in a shop or seen it on the telly. “Oh, clever. Hiding in plain sight. Well done,” Sherlock said. He carefully lifted an ornament off the tree—a birdcage, golden scrollwork with a bird-of-paradise perched on top. And inside the birdcage was the largest gemstone John had ever seen. Sherlock held it up. “Lose something, Inspector?”

Peterson rolled his eyes. “Hand it over, Holmes.”

Sherlock was staring at the gemstone as if it were the One Ring of Middle Earth. “It’s a beautiful thing. See, John, how it catches the light from the tree? Twenty years old and already responsible for two murders, the dissolution of a company, a suicide, and these robberies. It’s a powerful bit of crystallised charcoal.”

Holding his mobile to his ear with one hand, Peterson hooked it from Sherlock’s finger with the other. “Yes, sir, I have it. Yes. Are they?” He sighed. “No, I’m sure that’s best. Fine.” He rung off.

“Interpol?” Sherlock said.

“You’re having a really bad day,” Peterson said to Candace.

Across the room, Evelyn had sat on the sofa and was staring into space. Jensen pulled out of John’s hands to sit down next to her. John let him go.

There wasn’t much to do after that. John stood near the door, nervously twitching his hand at his side while Candace was arrested and both Evelyn and Jensen were taken in for questioning. Sherlock was strangely subdued, only half-heartedly trading barbs with the Interpol agents and needling Peterson for requiring his help on the case at all. Peterson, to his credit, took Sherlock’s mockery as it was meant and gave him a thankful nod. “You did good,” Peterson said, and clapped him on the shoulder. “We’ll raise a glass to you at the Yard tonight. You may not know it, but there are a lot of us who are proud of you, Holmes.” Speechless and shocked, Sherlock watched him walk away. “Happy Christmas.”

John stared at the side of Sherlock’s face, only imagining the roil of emotion going through his head. He stepped in close enough that his shoulder brushed Sherlock’s. “We can go now,” he said softly.

“Yes.” Sherlock didn’t move. Only when John grazed his knuckles against Sherlock’s, down at their sides, did Sherlock seem to come out of his stupor. He blinked at John, trying to focus. “Yes.”

John waited until they were out at the kerb, calling for a cab, to take Sherlock’s hand.

Their ride back to Baker St. was quite silent.

* * *

When they stepped out of the cab at 221, the sky was already beginning to lighten with Christmas dawn. John took a breath of cold air and let it out slowly. He was weary—deeply weary—but there was something to this morning, something that felt like freshness and newness and an adventure about to begin. He dallied behind while Sherlock let himself into the house, enjoying the strange sensation before following Sherlock inside.

He caught him up on the stairs. Sherlock was stepping up them slowly, pensively, apparently not concerned in the least that John was waiting behind him. He took his coat off and threw it onto John’s chair, then lay on the couch in his thinking position. John watched him for a moment, then went into the kitchen to make some tea. Small wonder Sherlock was pensive; the last few days were marked by snowfall, theft, a case that took far longer than he’d expected, and a watershed moment in their relationship. He was either lost in his mind palace, exhausted, or both.

John stood at the worktop and left him alone while the water heated. 

“John?” Sherlock said. He turned. Sherlock loomed in the doorway for a moment then stepped in close, closer, until John was caught between the worktop at his back and Sherlock at his front. With gentle hands Sherlock took John’s face and he bent his head to kiss him.

It was soft, and slow, and easy. John felt almost as though he’d done it a hundred times. Sherlock’s body was so warm. They kissed for long minutes as Sherlock poured his heart into it. John held him up and held him tight and gave him back as much love as he thought Sherlock could stand. The kiss broke when Sherlock’s knees wobbled, and he gathered John close and buried his face against John’s shoulder, trembling.

“How are you?” John said. He stroked down the firmness of Sherlock’s spine.

“Fine,” Sherlock said, voice muffled.

“Did you want tea?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” John held him for a while. “You know, you could have just kissed me. I would have figured out what you wanted easier than with all your…attempts.”

Sherlock huffed a laugh against John’s jumper. “I didn’t have enough data.”

“If you knew what to look for, you would have had all the data you needed.”

Sherlock pulled back just enough to look into John’s face. “What did I miss?”

John kissed Sherlock once, softly, and rubbed his mouth against Sherlock’s. “I do love you.”

“But…that doesn’t mean you wanted me to kiss you.”

“And a speeding pulse doesn’t mean it either,” John said. “Or dilating pupils, or whatever other nonsense you’ve picked up from reading those crap women’s magazines. Did you take a quiz once?” Sherlock pouted. John kissed it. “It’s not always like that. Pay better attention next time.”

“I’m hoping there won’t have to be a next time.”

John sniffed a laugh, smiling, amused. “Fair enough.”

“The water is going to boil.”

“Let it.”

“I want tea, John.”

“Fine.” John spun in Sherlock’s arms and was pleased to feel Sherlock curling around him from behind, as if he wanted tea but also didn’t want to let go. The kettle clicked and John poured, then turned around for more kissing while it steeped. Sherlock’s body felt long and lean and gorgeous and alive, and John’s heart clenched with the happiness of it. “I don’t suppose you’re sleeping tonight.”

“I could be convinced.”

“How?” Sherlock raised an eyebrow at him as if it were the stupidest question John could ask. John supposed it might have been. “Really?”

“What was it you were saying about your pulse, John?”

“Shut up.” John grinned.

They drank their tea out in the sitting room, trying to pick over whatever nibbles on the tray that might still be good after being out half the night. John binned the rest when they were finished and turned around to find Sherlock in his personal space.

“Come to bed,” Sherlock said.

John suppressed a shiver. “I’ll be down in a minute. Go clean your teeth.”

“What could you possibly need from upstairs?” Sherlock asked, sounding offended.

“Pyjamas, Sherlock.” He almost laughed at the scandalised expression on Sherlock’s face. “It’s, like, minus fifteen or something.”

“It’s _three degrees_.”

“Still. It’s cold.”

“My bed is warm.”

John let his head fall to Sherlock’s shoulder, exasperated. “Sherlock…”

“Fine.” Sherlock stepped back and headed for the bath. “They’re not going to stay on long anyway,” he said over his shoulder.

John wondered what the hell he was letting himself in for.

* * *

After he came down in his pyjamas, John locked the house and brushed his teeth. Satisfied he was ready for bed, he hunted for Sherlock.

He found him in his room, under the covers, fast asleep.

Throat tight, John closed the door behind him and crept toward the bed. Sherlock stirred. “Hey,” John whispered. He ignored the pounding of his heart and slipped into bed beside him. The side of the bed—his side of the bed—was cold. John scooted up close to Sherlock and his body heat.

Sherlock made a little grumbling noise that ached inside John’s ribcage. He reached out, still flopped on his stomach, and slid a hand under John’s side. “Mrph.”

“So I’ve heard,” John said. He wrapped an arm over Sherlock’s lower back and pushed his lower leg between Sherlock’s. Sex might not be in the offering, but John would be damned if he was going to pass up a chance to cuddle.

“Feet. Cold,” Sherlock mumbled accusingly.

“I told you.” Sherlock’s skin was soft and he gave off a surprising amount of heat for all that he was only wearing a pair of boxer briefs. John rested his mouth on Sherlock’s upper arm. “Asleep?”

“Mm-hm.”

John wasn’t sure he was going to make it through the surge of feeling that accompanied Sherlock’s sleepy noises pressed into the pillow, eight inches from John’s head. His chest clenched tightly and he had to concentrate on breathing for a long few seconds. He stroked his fingers on Sherlock’s skin, but stopped when Sherlock twitched uncomfortably, John wondered, amused, whether it tickled, or whether Sherlock were unaccustomed to that sort of touch, or whether emotion was simply annoying. Sherlock snuffled his face into the pillow, and John doubted there was any chance in hell of him actually falling asleep. He thought he might just lie awake all night and love Sherlock from inches away.

Eventually, however, his mind turned sluggish and he got a little bit used to the sound of Sherlock’s slumbering breath, and those combined with the warmth of the bed and the comforting smell of the room eased John gently, slowly, into sleep.

* * *

John was awakened by a slice of light from Sherlock’s window cutting right across his face, turning his eyelids red. “Augh,” he said, and rolled over.

“Why do you think I don’t sleep on that side?” Sherlock mumbled.

“Laziness,” said John. He knuckled his eyes.

“Is this going to stop you sleeping in here again tonight?”

Again, John pressed his face to Sherlock’s upper arm and entwined a leg with Sherlock’s; he was sleep-warm and pliable and so satisfying to touch. “It’s going to make me buy you new curtains, that’s for sure.”

“I like what I have.”

“Guess I’ll sleep upstairs.”

“It only starts at 1pm.”

That brought John slightly more awake. “Is it one already?”

“We didn’t get to sleep until 9:00, John.”

“This is going to blow my schedule all to hell.”

“It’s Christmas. You don’t have a schedule.”

“That’s right.” John smiled against Sherlock’s skin. “It’s Christmas.” He squeezed Sherlock. “Happy Christmas.”

Sherlock rolled sideways and slipped a thigh between John’s. “May I unwrap my gift now?”

“What’s your—oh.” John figured it out. His body began to wake up in more ways than one. “That’s an interesting gift.”

“It’s bound to be my favourite,” Sherlock said. He touched John’s face and laid a close-mouthed kiss on his cheek, his jaw, and started down his neck.

John stretched it, all the better to feel Sherlock’s mouth. “Better than the gloves I got you?”

“Mmm.” Sherlock nipped. “Liar. You didn’t get me gloves this year.”

John marveled, strangely, that there was nothing to marvel at. He was in bed with Sherlock, anticipating morning sex, and nothing about that seemed extraordinary in the least. He stroked Sherlock’s back. It was so _soft_.

Sherlock pressed his face into John’s shoulder and purred, a low rumbling hum that John felt echo in his own chest. “Nice?” he said. In answer, the noise got louder. John started kissing a line down Sherlock’s shoulder.

After a moment, Sherlock started tugging up the back of John’s shirt. “Off.”

“Hm?” John said. “Oh.” He disengaged just enough to allow Sherlock to pull off John’s pyjama top, then consented to let Sherlock shimmy him out of his bottoms, too. Still under the duvet, John slid closer. “You too, then.”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

John chuckled wryly. “You thought I’d never ask for you to take your _pants_ off?”

“I did,” said Sherlock. He stroked both hands back from the sides of John’s face, capturing him, and dipped his head in for a series of soft, wet, pointedly-closed-mouthed kisses.

“You really don’t have to worry about morning breath. I’m not that skittish.”

“I’m not worried,” Sherlock said, in the tone of voice which meant he certainly had been. Charmed, John wrapped himself around him.

And stopped. Because while it hadn’t been too weird before, to be entangled with each other—all that skin, all the touching—made John’s nervous system spark with pleasure and that, _that_ was certainly nothing he’d experienced with Sherlock before. He let out a shaking breath. Sherlock unfroze with a quiet moan, and John’s brain felt as if it opened like a flower. His body was suddenly flooded with hormones.

He kissed Sherlock: deeply, desperately, with as much passion as he could, and Sherlock responded by nearly sticking his tongue all the way in his mouth. John pulled back slightly and Sherlock got the hint, settling into steady brushes of lips and tongue that made John’s toes curl with the intimacy. Sherlock sucked on his lower lip.

“Can I…just…” Maintaining the kiss, John wedged his hand down between them and touched the long, flattering line of Sherlock’s erection. Sherlock jerked and bit John’s mouth. John hissed and pulled away.

“Sorry. Sorry, I just… Here. I’m ready now, John.”

“You weren’t ready?”

“I am now.”

“Sherlock, you have done… I mean, this isn’t…”

Sherlock sighed. “No John, this is not my first time.”

“Oh. Okay. I was just. Er.”

“Oh for—“ Sherlock ducked his head and kissed John, hard and slow, a combination that made every nerve in John’s body sizzle and spark. He threw a thigh over John’s hip and grabbed John’s cock and rutted forward against it.

John’s brain shorted out. “Oh, fff—“ He jerked and groaned, and Sherlock did it again, and again. Finally John got a little bit of his focus back and used the hand not trapped against the mattress to grab Sherlock’s arse; he felt it flex with each thrust of his hips, and John’s arousal beat even stronger through his blood.

Then Sherlock moaned, and John’s body felt incandescent. He began to move in counterpoint to Sherlock, pushing back, the pleasure building and building, the sweat slicking up his hip and trickling down from his temple. He felt as though he were reaching, grasping at bliss with both hands, and just when he thought he might be just on the very edge of orgasm, Sherlock growled and stopped. He shoved at the bedclothes with one arm and tried to kick them off. “Too _hot_ ,” he said, petulant and a bit grouchy. John found it adorable.

Cool air washed over them and John sighed. It did feel nice, though he had no doubt that it would soon be too chilly if they didn’t start moving again. Sherlock passed his hand over his mouth and reached down and stroked John just before thrusting again, and the movement was slick and easy and gorgeous, and John groaned. Something about being open to the air was sexy, something about doing this in full view of the world, about not covering it up, and John pulsed even harder. He kissed Sherlock, and they found their rhythm again, and soon Sherlock was moaning into John’s mouth.

“Oh, _christ_ ,” John gasped. He moved his hips just a little bit differently and Sherlock’s noises caught in his throat before they became louder. “Oh god, yes, please, oh god please…” he started babbling, and the pace built, and tension grew, and he felt himself racing, screaming toward release.

Sherlock gritted out a cut-glass noise and pressed, ground forward against John’s cock, harder, harder, before his jaw dropped and he moaned. His cock jerked alongside John’s and he started coming, his hips juddering as his system overflowed with pleasure.

John felt his own body ratchet up in sympathy. He watched the changing expressions of bliss on Sherlock’s face waiting, waiting, until his patience broke. He reached between them and pulled at his own cock, slick and warm, and each tug drew him up tighter, tighter, the arousal so strong it stole his breath, until with only a second’s warning it bloomed. Orgasm hit like a thunderclap and he was wrung with convulsions, pulsing wetly all over his hand and their stomachs, marking Sherlock as his own. He spasmed as pleasure spread, brilliant and warm, through his blood.

He collapsed bonelessly against Sherlock and twitched. Sherlock shuddered with his own aftershock.

“Ohh, god yes,” John groaned. He shivered. Sherlock tried to stroke John’s back, but only half managed it before his arm flopped against John’s side again. He made a quiet noise, a moan under his breath. John kissed his forehead. “Okay?’

Sherlock nodded.

“Better now?”

“Much.”

“Like your Christmas present?”

Sherlock snuggled in, apparently half-asleep. “I love my Christmas present.”

Love. John’s chest tightened with happiness before he, too, fell back asleep.


	6. Christmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He wiped a bit of his drool off Sherlock’s shoulder as he unpicked himself from the knot of their limbs, ignoring Sherlock’s groan of complaint and throwing some pyjamas on as quickly as possible. He trotted out to the kitchen door, trying to tell from the angle of the light what time it was.
> 
> “Hello! Happy Christmas!” Mrs. Hudson said, and knocked on the door just as John skidded to a halt and opened it.
> 
> “Good-morning-happy-Christmas,” John said, smiling. He hoped desperately he didn’t look too much a mess. He hoped there wasn’t anything incriminating in his hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to Wearitcounts and BillieThePoet for betaing for me on this. They've been absolutely marvellous.

“Yoo-hoo!”

John woke up with a start, heart pounding. Mrs. Hudson. Outside. On the landing. Did he lock the door?

He wiped a bit of his drool off Sherlock’s shoulder as he unpicked himself from the knot of their limbs, ignoring Sherlock’s groan of complaint and throwing some pyjamas on as quickly as possible. He trotted out to the kitchen door, trying to tell from the angle of the light what time it was.

“Hello! Happy Christmas!” Mrs. Hudson said, and knocked on the door just as John skidded to a halt and opened it.

“Good-morning-happy-Christmas,” John said, smiling. He hoped desperately he didn’t look too much a mess. He hoped there wasn’t anything incriminating in his hair.

“Morning?” She looked him up and down. “I’m sorry, I woke you. Go back, wake him up gently. I’ll have dinner ready in a couple of hours—just wanted to know if you two wanted a bit of a snack first. But I see you’re busy.”

“Oh, no, sorry, no. I was just…I was about to shower.”

“You put his t-shirt on, dear.” She gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Go give him a nice Christmas,” she added, heading back downstairs. “I’ll let you know when everything is ready to go.”

“Mrs.— I—“ John gave up and closed the door. _I already gave him his ‘nice Christmas’_ , he thought. _I’m not sure I’m ready to do it again just yet._ Back in Sherlock’s room he shut that door and crawled back into bed. “We need to get ready for Christmas dinner, Sherlock.”

“Mmnf.”

“I’m serious.” John rubbed his mouth on the stubble of Sherlock’s jaw. “I’m going to shower. Are you coming with me?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Right now.”

“Mmm.”

John pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Okay. I’ll see you in there,” he said, not expecting a damn thing. He smiled to himself as he headed upstairs to get some clean clothes, joy like champagne effervescing in his bloodstream.

True to expectations Sherlock stayed in bed the whole time, and John wandered back into Sherlock’s bedroom dressed but barefoot to find him sprawled out across the bed, face-planted into John’s pillow, mouth open. “Sherlock. Sherlock. Sherlock.”

“Mmgh.”

“Get up.”

“Mmmhmm.” 

It was ordinarily annoying to expend this much effort to wake Sherlock, but this time it was almost cute. John sat on the bed and kissed down his spine. “We have things to get ready before dinner. Go take a shower.”

“Mmf. Your methods are counterproductive.” John bit him. “Mmm…” he groaned and writhed into the mattress. “Very counterproductive.”

“Get up. Maybe tonight we can explore my dentition, but right now we have to pick up the flat and get ready, and I’m not doing it on my own.”

“Five minutes.”

“Now.”

“Five—no. Stop— _John_.”

John finished pushing the duvet to the floor. “Up.”

Sherlock stretched, all ten glorious miles of him. John stared. “In what way, ‘up’?” He started stroking himself.

John blinked and snorted a laugh, then shook his head. “I’m finished with you.”

“Shame,” Sherlock said, but a few minutes later, while John was cleaning the kitchen, he heard the shower start.

* * *

The rest of the day continued mostly in the same vein. Sherlock betrayed a previously-hidden undercurrent of crass humour which John suspected he was deploying simply to needle John into a response, and John tried to maintain the illusion that he wasn’t constantly thinking about getting Sherlock back in bed throughout the festivities.

“More mash?” Mrs. Hudson said, going back into the kitchen with her plate. “More turkey? Either of you?”

“Mrs. Hudson, I’m not certain I can feel my feet,” John said. She laughed. From his position laid out on the sofa, Sherlock groaned in pain. “Sherlock is stuffed too.”

“It was that third helping of glazed carrot,” she called back to them.

Sherlock groaned again. There was an echo of it in John’s head that had absolutely nothing to do with food, and he rubbed the back of his neck. “Don’t _mention_ them, for god’s sake,” said Sherlock.

“What, the carrots?” John said. Sherlock rolled his head sideways and glared at him with one baleful eye. John laughed. “I’m not sure the human body is prepared for your version of feast or famine.”

“Oh, shut up, John.”

John laughed. He wanted to go over and give him a kiss, but he stayed in his seat; Mrs. Hudson may have already rumbled them, but still he didn’t want to give her an eyeful.

“Now,” she said, coming back in with a plate of mince pies in one hand and a Christmas cake in the other. “Who’s for what?”

Sherlock let out another distracting groan but John stood up to help her. “Jesus— What did you do?”

“Oh, nothing much,” she said with a bird-like laugh. She let him take the cake from her and placed a motherly hand on his shoulder while he set it on the table and turned around to grab the pies. “Just wanted something a bit festive for the occasion.”

“You’re lovely,” he said, and kissed her cheek.

“Oh, stop,” she said, but she blushed a little and grinned at them both. “Sherlock, I expect you’re going to want some later on, so I’ll leave this here when I go?”

Sherlock didn’t say anything: he just rested both hands on his distended little pot-belly of a stomach. John grinned at her. “He says thanks.”

“I guess this means you and I don’t get the pleasure of his playing this year,” she said to John.

In a flurry of dressing down Sherlock abandoned his whinging and stood up to take his violin out of its case beside the sofa.

“Oh!” said Mrs. Hudson. “Oh, excellent. Thank you, Sherlock.”

John spied the tiniest bit of smile on the corner of Sherlock’s mouth, and warmth settled in his stomach. Sherlock tightened his bow and plucked the strings and launched himself into a jaunty version of _Ding Dong Merrily on High_. He meandered around the sitting room, every once in a while catching John’s eye. The warmth in John’s stomach grew.

For the next half hour, Sherlock went through a series of Mrs. Hudson’s favourites, ending with _What Child is This_ when John got up to get a slice of cake. Sherlock eyed it greedily all through the last chorus. He embellished wildly when John took a bite, and John threatened him with his fork.

Mrs. Hudson clapped when he finished, and—as usual—Sherlock bowed. Then he sat his violin down on the table and winced with both hands on his stomach, apparently having forgotten about his battle with the carrots while he played. John snorted. Mrs. Hudson ignored both of them and went out into the hall, coming back with a stack of presents that reached the top of her head.

“Mrs. Hudson!” John put down his plate to go help her.

“Don’t make a fuss,” she said. “They’re not heavy.” She set them down on the coffee table and beamed at them. “Now. Who’s first?”

John unwrapped a few button-downs and a pair of jeans (“the gift receipts are in there as well, so feel to change them if they’re not right”), and a pack of the small notebooks he always carried around with him, as well as a nice pen.

“I think those will come in handy,” she said.

“I’m sure they will,” he said, giving her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you.”

“Happy Christmas.”

John smacked Sherlock away from his cake and sent him to go open his own gifts. 

Mrs. Hudson handed him a similar pile of boxes, recognisable immediately as clothing. Sherlock opened them up to find a few pair of pyjama bottoms, two tremendously soft t-shirts, a new dressing gown, and a pair of thick, wooly socks.

“I know you have socks, but these…these are good. Warm. It gets chilly up here, and I wonder if you don’t notice, you running round barefoot all the time. I hoped these would be comfortable enough you’d think to put them on.”

With a tiny smile lingering in the corner of his mouth, Sherlock hugged her. “Thank you.” John loved him, loved her, and loved the way Sherlock touched her: carefully, protectively, as affectionate as if she were his own mother. Which was a thought. John made a mental note to ask what Sherlock had sent to his actual mother.

As for Mrs. Hudson, John was shocked to find Sherlock pulling out a box from behind the sofa and presenting it to her. “From us,” he said.

John spoke up. “But Sherlock, I already—“

“John.”

John let his mouth fall shut.

Mrs. Hudson opened the box to reveal two glittering metal tree decorations: lemon-shaped, carved, with patterns of coloured glass on the top and bottom and a flat area on the front large enough for engraving. John moved closer to see. The golden-coloured one had red glass, and on the plate in front was clearly inscribed, ‘John’ in neat italic script. The silver-coloured decoration had blue glass, and it bore the name, ‘Sherlock’. They really were quite beautiful, John thought.

“Oh,” Mrs. Hudson said. She covered her mouth with one shaking hand. “Sherlock.”

“For your new tree,” he said, hands behind his back, looking smug and quietly happy all at once.

When she looked up at him, her eyes were damp. “I adore them. Thank you.”

“You’re, er. You’re welcome.” Sherlock looked away and went over to his chair, out of range of the overflow of emotion.

John felt something expand in his chest, tight and hot. He wanted to go over to Sherlock but hugged Mrs. Hudson instead.

“Thank you,” she said. She felt so fragile in his arms all of a sudden. 

He gave her a squeeze and a kiss on the cheek. “You’re welcome. But there’s something else, too,” he said.

“You didn’t have to—“

“Oh hush,” he said, smiling, and grabbed the box for her from where he’d set it on the desk earlier in the day.

Inside was a teapot, kin to a set of cups in which she frequently brought them up their tea. “Oh John, these are—they don’t make these anymore.”

“I know,” he said, grinning. “But the internet…you know.”

“Oh, come here. You’re lovely.” She set it down and gave John a hug. “You’re both lovely. Thank you.” She went over to Sherlock, where he still sat in his chair away from the effusive emotion, and dropped a kiss on his head.

“Thank _you_ ,” John said. “And thanks for dinner.”

“Oh, that was nothing,” she said, waving it away and going into the kitchen. “It’s not Christmas without dinner.” John had to convince her not to clear up and to take some pudding and cake with her. For a few minutes she fussed over them, fawned over her tree decorations, and then, claiming sleepiness, took herself off to bed.

Before she left she gave John a bit of a wink though, and he didn’t think he’d ever stop blushing.

“Mrs. Hudson knows,” John said, draping a paper crown on Sherlock’s head. He’d refused to participate in the actual cracker-pulling, so John figured it was at least his due.

“Of course she does. She’s not an idiot.” Sherlock plucked the hat off and dropped it on the ground.

“Those baubles were lovely. When did you get them? And where?”

“Oh, last week sometime.” Sherlock waved it off. “You weren’t here.”

“You were bored and went… Christmas shopping.”

“I needed to walk.”

“You were bored without me,” John said, allowing a bit of smugness to creep into his tone as he sat in his chair across from Sherlock. By tacit agreement they’d left them close to each other, facing into the fire.

“Of course not.”

“Mmm-hmm.” John reached out for Sherlock’s hand. To his pleasure, Sherlock took it. “Did you get anyone else any gifts?”

“Subtle, John.”

“Well?”

“Of course I got you a gift. What did you think I was doing up here when you came home from work?”

John almost laughed, remembering the mysterious shifting noises. So that’s why Sherlock had nicked the keys: he hadn’t wanted to get caught red-handed. “You were, what? Wrapping gifts?”

“Is that so hard to imagine?”

“As a matter of fact it is, yes.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Making an effort, hm?” John lifted their hands to his mouth and kissed Sherlock’s knuckles.

“If you don’t stop teasing you’re not getting a thing.”

“Ah, right. My apologies, then.”

They sat in silence, watching the logs spit and pop. The fire resettled.

“What did you send along to your mother?”

“A brooch.”

“That sounds…nice.”

“I should have waited.”

“Why?”

“If I’d known, I would have just announced to her all about you.”

“All about—“ John was interrupted by a squeeze of Sherlock’s hand. “Ah.”

“Could have spared the expense.”

Warmth spun in John’s gut. He wondered if this wasn’t the most brilliant Christmas in memory. “That would have made her happy?”

Sherlock took a moment before responding. “Secretly, it will make her very happy.”

“And not secretly?”

With a crook of his brow, Sherlock looked sideways at him. “Mycroft and I did get it from somewhere, you know.”

This time, John squeezed his hand. “Ah, right. Yes.” He stroked the pad of his thumb on Sherlock’s knuckle and wondered if all Holmeses were stunted children on the surface and roiling balls of emotion underneath. He wondered whether he’d gotten the easiest one or the most difficult of the lot.

“Well?” Sherlock said.

John tilted his head. “What?”

“Don’t you want your present?”

“Are you daft?” Of course he did. What on earth does Sherlock Holmes consider a good Christmas gift?

From behind the sofa Sherlock produced a sizeable box. It had heft, from the way he was moving, and John was surprised he hadn’t noticed the sofa moved far enough away from the wall to hide it back there. Well. It had been a busy few days.

Sherlock set the box down at John’s feet and sat down, refusing to look him in the eye. “Merry Christmas, John.”

John stared at it for a moment. It was perfectly wrapped, edges precisely tucked under and just the barest amount of cellotape showing at the sides. “How many times did you wrap this to get it right?”

“Just open it.”

Grinning, John tore into it, then sat back, stunned. “Where in the hell…Sherlock.” It was a collection of child’s adventure books—the same edition, the same colour, the same illustrations on the front that John had remembered dearly loving as a boy. “How did you…” John looked at him, wide-eyed. He suddenly felt nine years of age all over again. “Was there a photo?”

Sherlock curled a smile. “Well done, John. There’s a photo of you on your sister’s Facebook that has those in the background, and you were clearly reading one of the set when the shot was taken.”

“You went to Harry’s Facebook?”

“Research.”

“Into what?”

“So?” Sherlock said, ignoring the question. “Was that a good gift?”

John looked at him, at the apprehension in the set of his shoulders, and smiled. Joy like spun sugar and dirty knees and the fresh potential of a new bicycle filled his chest. He stood up and pressed a soft kiss to Sherlock’s mouth. Sherlock didn’t let him break away after one, but instead leaned forward to expand it into a gentle play of mouths and brushes of tongue that shot a thrill down into John’s centre. When the kiss melted away John looked into Sherlock’s eyes, hazy and emotionally aroused. “Sentiment,” John said.

Sherlock pressed his lips together, but his eyes smiled.

John found a spot on a shelf for them with pride of place, directly in his eye-line, a visible evidence of Sherlock’s affection. He handed his gift to Sherlock. “Did you deduce this already?”

“No.”

“Are you lying?”

“…No.”

John snorted. “All right. Just get this over with.”

The first gift was a selection of antique forensic specimens on slides, with a book detailing the histories of each. Sherlock smiled. “Where did you find these?”

“I’m not saying a word.” He’d called in a favour from a friend who had a collection.

“And now the books. I haven’t been able to deduce precisely…” Sherlock had torn the wrapping enough to read the spines, and he stopped short and stared. “Monograph on the Polyphonic Motets of… John. What did you do?” His eyes were huge.

John tucked his hands behind his back and grinned proudly. “I had them professionally bound.” It had been no small amount of work, too, to gather all the monographs together and make sure they were typeset well, to choose the right materials and be certain everything would come out perfectly.

Sherlock finished opening up the stack. “Tobacco…Criminology and Disguise…Scent Detection and the…” He examined the binding and the inside, presumably to check the spelling and the typography and whatever else he deemed important. “Even the end papers are lovely. John. This is beautiful.”

“You would say that about your own work.” He tried to laugh it off a bit; the sincerity on Sherlock’s face was blazing and a bit too bright to endure.

Sherlock set them aside and stood up to take John’s face in both hands and kiss him. “Those were excellent gifts, John.”

“Sentiment?”

“Has its advantages. On occasion.” The corner of Sherlock’s mouth quirked up again and he kissed John softly.

There was a strange yipping noise from the opposite corner of the room. John pulled back and stared into Sherlock’s face, confused. “What the hell was that?”

“Gladstone,” Sherlock said off-handedly.

“Gladstone? Oh,” John said, finally figuring out what the hell he was talking about. “I didn’t even know you’d taken him out of the package.”

“While you were cleaning.”

“Of course.”

“It’s really a remarkably toy, John. I think I could train it to automatically—“

“Maybe I should take back your gifts,” John said.

Sherlock blinked at him. “Why would you do that?”

“I should have just gotten you a dog bed.”

“John…”

“And maybe some bones.”

“Be serious, please.”

“Says the adult with a toy dog.”

“John…”

“What does a robot dog eat, anyway? Bytes?”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes; John became even more smug in the face of it. “I loathe you.”

“No you don’t,” John said. He licked his lips.

Sherlock stared at his mouth. “No. I don’t.”

“Come on. That was a decent joke.”

“It was rubbish.”

“I’ve been thinking of it for ages.” John closed the distance again, wrapping his arms round Sherlock’s neck and pressing close and leaning into a long, slow, thorough kiss. Sherlock tasted of the slice of John’s Christmas cake he’d been nicking bites from.

“You couldn’t have put your mind to a better use than that?”

“No.”

They kissed lazily for a minute or so. It was still new enough to be exciting, but for all that John was comfortable with the arrangement. It felt like home. Eventually, however, duty tugged on his jumper enough to pull him away and he started clearing up from the evening’s festivities. Sherlock picked up his violin and began to play as John brought dishes to the sink.

“That’s nice, Sherlock. Thank you.” He didn’t expect a response, and he didn’t get one. He binned all the wrappings and scrubbed down the table and wrapped up the cake for later. “Midnight snack, I expect?”

“Mm,” Sherlock said. “Nourishment for a second round.”

John was wringing out the sponge when he finally figured out what Sherlock was talking about. He laughed. “Perhaps we should have bought Mrs. Hudson some earplugs.”

“I’ll just put something in your mouth instead,” Sherlock said from the relative safety of the sitting room. John stopped doing the washing up just long enough to peer at him from the doorway of the kitchen, eyebrow raised. Sherlock smirked and transitioned the soft song he had playing into something that sounded like _Jingle Bell Rock._ John despaired.

“I’m going to regret this,” he called out from back at the sink.

“We’ll see,” Sherlock said.

John did one sink’s-full of dishes and gave up. He left the kitchen drying his hands and tossed the cloth onto his chair on his way over to Sherlock. For a few moments he stood watching him play, then finally indulged himself in doing something he realised he’d wanted to do for a very, very long time. John wrapped his arms around Sherlock from behind as he played and let his head rest against the back of his neck. Sherlock wriggled to fine-tune John’s position but, to John’s delight, didn’t throw him off. Instead he segued into a slow, sultry tune that sounded familiar, even if John had never heard it played on the violin before.

He and Sherlock swayed gently, back and forth, as Sherlock played for John a song that settled deep and comfortable in his bones.

“ _What are you doing New Year’s Eve,_ ” John whispered along with the music, feeling himself being lulled into a trance, floating on sentiment. He kissed the back of Sherlock’s neck. “I’m going to be with you.” He swayed, pressed up against Sherlock’s body, long after the song ended. “Wherever we are, I’ll be with you.”

“John?”

“Hm?”

“Could we… Perhaps we could go to bed now.” Sherlock’s rumble could be felt in his back, through his jacket.

John had to breathe. “Absolutely.”

* * *

Jockeying for position at the sink fell out just as it always did when John and Sherlock happened to be going to bed at the same time, and John once again insisted upon wearing pyjamas, and Sherlock again lodged a complaint about them, but soon the lights were off and and the house was secured and John found himself standing once more in Sherlock’s bedroom, about to go to sleep.

This time, however, Sherlock wasn’t in bed yet. He was stood in the middle of the floor looking a bit lost, as if he didn’t know what to do with himself. John snorted. “Go on, get in bed.”

“I didn’t know if you preferred to sleep on a different side. Because of the light in the morning. I suppose I could switch if you wanted—I doubt that—“

“You’re joking.”

“…No…”

“Are you still trying to woo me?”

All softness and submission snapped from Sherlock’s face and he stared at John, looking much more familiar and sharp and assessing. “ _Woo_ you?”

John laughed. “Not the word you would have used?”

“I wasn’t _wooing_ you. No one calls it wooing these days.”

“What would you call it, then?” John draped his arms around Sherlock, bringing back Sherlock’s hesitation and the unsure movements of his face. John was flooded with a sudden flush of love for him.

Clearly wrong-footed, Sherlock rested his hands on John’s hips. He slipped his thumbs under the hem of John’s pullover sweatshirt and stroked his skin as if he wasn’t certain he was allowed to touch him in that way. “Assessing your willingness to…undergo a change in the parameters of our…relationship.”

“Oh, that’s all?” John played with the curls at the nape of Sherlock’s neck.

“Oh, hush.” Sherlock ducked his head to kiss him. John let him stall for a few delicious moments, enjoying the way Sherlock started to tremble slightly and cant his hips against John’s thigh.

“Why now?” John said against his mouth.

“What are you asking?” Sherlock started playing with the waistband of John’s pyjamas. He sucked in a quiet breath when he discovered John not wearing pants underneath.

“Why now? Of all other times? Why now?”

“Because…” 

He played at sidetracked very well, but John knew—perhaps better than anyone—just how many tracks his mind could run down at the same time. “Mm?”

“ _Mm_ what?” Sherlock pushed a hand into John’s bottoms and drew one fingertip lightly up and down his crack, petting the hairs at the top and continuing on down.

John shivered and let him do it a few times before pressing him for an answer. “Why now, Sherlock?”

Sherlock’s swallow was loud from six inches away. “I was sure you felt it.”

“Felt what?” John asked, certain for some reason he wasn’t talking about love or lust or anything obvious.

“We were fine. But not as… You were slipping away.”

John was flushed with sudden red anger. “I’ve been right here, Sherlock. In fact, under the circumstances I think I’ve been more than—“

“No, shut up, John. Listen.” Sherlock grabbed John by the face and stared into his eyes, but after only a few moments his gaze fell to John’s mouth, and there it stayed. Tension coiled in John’s gut. “Between us, this… This was starting to become…unwieldy. It was poisoning the well. Things were only going to become worse with time.”

“You mean…the awkwardness.”

“Yes, John. What did you think was going on?”

“God. Sherlock, I…” John let his forehead fall to Sherlock’s shoulder, and was surprised when Sherlock wrapped both arms around him and pulled him even closer. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but it wasn’t that. “I didn’t know what it was. I’d been ignoring this so long I guess I dismissed it as a source. I thought I was still angry.”

Sherlock froze. “You _are_ still angry.”

“No, I’m not. Not really. I just—“

“Yes, John. You are. You’re better, and it’s okay. But you’re still hurt.”

“How do you—“

“I’ve always known when you’ve had nightmares, John. Even when they changed. They weren’t about the same things anymore. They were my fault.”

John held on to Sherlock and breathed in the scent of his skin and thought about it. “This helps, though.”

Sherlock pressed his mouth to John’s shoulder. The sweatshirt caught the heat of his breath like a pocket of damp warmth. “I hope so,” he said very, very quietly.

They pressed tighter to each other, almost clinging. John wondered at the tremor he could still feel in Sherlock’s muscles, and wondered what emotions he was trying to process. “I love you,” he whispered.

Sherlock let out the strangest huff of air, rough with a bit of voice and choked at the end. “Good.”

John carded both hands through Sherlock’s hair and revelled in the gasp as Sherlock’s body immediately switched gears. He scratched his nails all over his scalp and Sherlock’s spine went pliant and his knees rubbery. “That’s good too?”

In answer, Sherlock pushed his hands underneath the hem of John’s sweatshirt and stroked the large muscles of his back in a particularly emphatic massage. John’s toes curled.

John ran his hands down Sherlock’s neck to his shoulders, and Sherlock dragged his knuckles down John’s spine, and they both began to touch each other, slowly, steadily, gasping and quietly moaning and pressing their bodies together over and over. The feel of Sherlock hardening, curling his hips up with every undulation of his spine, almost aroused John more than Sherlock’s hands themselves. He was so very, very eager. John sank his teeth into Sherlock’s shoulder, just enough to leave a mark. Sherlock gasped and his back stiffened. John felt his cock actually twitch.

“I’d wondered if you were joking about exploring my dentition this morning,” John said.

Sherlock’s voice was rough. “No.”

“Excellent.” He applied his lips and teeth to Sherlock’s throat and enjoyed the utterly debased sound of Sherlock losing control of himself over it. Without warning, he reached down Sherlock’s pants and adjusted him to a more comfortable angle. Sherlock’s intake of air was a delight. John pulled his hand out and stroked over the bulge, pushing the vee between his first and middle finger down his length and drawing back up, dragging his fingers between Sherlock’s balls and pressing up until he drew a circle around the head. Sherlock shook and his knees buckled.

“ _John_ ,” he croaked, and he clutched on harder.

“Renegotiating the parameters of our relationship,” John said with a smile. Arousal and joy both pulsed through his veins.

“Keep going,” Sherlock said, wrecked.

John laughed at him and reached through the slit of his pants to pull him out. He stroked gently, relentlessly, as Sherlock shuddered against him. “Greedy.”

“It’s Christmas.”

“The spirit of giving as usual. Why would I have expected different?”

“I just—ohhh…” Sherlock twitched even harder. John was amazed. “I just—“

“Here.” John led Sherlock to bed. “Lie down. If I’m going to give you something for Christmas, I’m going to do it right.”

Sherlock opened his eyes. He looked hazy and stunned, pink spots on his cheeks and already spreading down his chest. He was gorgeous. “Why does that sound sinister?”

John chuckled at him. “Because you know me.”

The smile that took Sherlock’s face right then was warm and liquid and and thick as honey. “Better than anyone.”

A flutter started up in John’s stomach and, to quell it, he bossed Sherlock around. “Lie down. Pants off. On your back. Legs apart, feet flat.”

The smile dropped off Sherlock’s face and John would have sworn his eyes went darker. He hurried to comply. John watched him spread out over the bed, his body on display, flushed and breathing heavily, dark between the legs. Before John was done he’d be flushed even darker, and his mouth watered.

“Well?” Sherlock said, impatient as always, the prat. John adored him.

He rolled up his sleeves, knelt between Sherlock’s legs, and shoved a pillow beneath his hips. “Ready?”

“Come _on_ , John.”

Grinning, John leaned down and, instead of swallowing Sherlock’s cock as he knew he was expecting, mouthed liberally at the sensitive skin behind his balls. Sherlock jerked and slowly, slowly melted. His breathing became even rougher.

If there was one thing John had confidence in, it was that he knew how to use his mouth. He sucked and licked, pressed hard circles into the flesh to barely tease at the prostate hidden away in the deeper places, kissed softly, and wound Sherlock up into a tight ball of sensation. Then he leaned up to mouth wetly at the base of Sherlock’s cock. He felt the warmth of satisfaction spread in his chest when Sherlock groaned.

He cast an eye up the bed and saw Sherlock press his shaking hands over his eyes as if he were having a tough time dealing with what was happening. John almost knew how he felt.

For a moment or so John slid the softness of his mouth up and down the underside of Sherlock’s cock, making it slick and wet, torturing him with endless sensation. Sherlock whimpered. The head of his cock was dark, and he’d started to leak, and John had little choice but to stop for a moment to taste him, to drag his tongue over the tip and breathe, hot and damp, over the head. There were vibrations up the bed and John lifted his head to see that Sherlock had thrown his arms wide to fist his hands in the bottom sheet.

John took it as his cue to duck down and liberally suck kisses into Sherlock’s perineum, humming. In the middle of it he swiped his mouth over his palm and reached up without a break to take Sherlock’s cock in hand and stroke it, the glide easy and smooth and enough to make Sherlock groan toward the ceiling and spread his legs. _Excellent._

With his other hand, John drew wetness down from Sherlock’s perineum and carefully brushed the pad of his finger across the pucker of Sherlock’s anus. Sherlock jerked.

“Is this okay?” John said.

Sherlock let out a long shuddering breath and established the placement of his legs even wider. “ _Please_ ,” he whispered.

John moaned quietly at the desire in his voice and shifted slightly sideways. The movement shifted his own erection into an awkward angle and he had to adjust himself. Up the bed, Sherlock chuckled.

“You like this.”

“Obviously,” John said.

Sherlock let his head fall back onto the pillow. John smiled.

One finger. That was all John planned to use. That was all he needed. He slicked his finger with saliva and breached Sherlock millimetre by millimetre, enjoying the push-back of his muscle, the roughness, the tight clutch of him, the way Sherlock shook violently and breathed and moaned. He pulled out slightly and pushed back in, waiting for Sherlock to relax into the feeling of it.

“Okay?” he whispered.

“Of course,” Sherlock said. He sounded shattered.

“You’re sure?”

“ _Move_ , John.”

With a bit of a smile, John complied. He stroked in and out, toyed with the muscle, slicked it with more saliva, and watched the changing expressions on Sherlock’s face. When Sherlock settled into a vague, slack-jawed haze John wet his other hand and pulled his cock. Sherlock’s legs jerked and he let out a chest-deep groan. John felt him tighten briefly around his finger. “Yesss…” John filled with pride. “How’s that?”

Sherlock whimpered. His hands kneaded into the sheets.

John grinned and, after a breath, pressed circles against his prostate. Sherlock moaned. John started in on a steady rhythm with both hands, one finger deep and the other hand slicked and moving fast, then leaned down and deployed his mouth. He sucked Sherlock’s balls and pressed his tongue into the slick hairiness behind them, he lightly scraped his teeth on Sherlock’s skin, kissed him, licked, all the while fingering him and jerking his cock.

Sherlock had gone completely to pieces. John felt the light of happiness spread through him at the sounds Sherlock couldn’t contain—the moans, the whimpers, the broken groaning, and after about a minute of total stimulation Sherlock’s legs began to shake violently. His knees jerked, the long, gorgeous muscles in his thighs tensed and released, and his toes curled in spasms as if Sherlock had lost all control. John pressed harder into Sherlock’s prostate, then slid his finger in and out, and Sherlock released a drawn-out whimper.

It was muffled suddenly, and John supposed Sherlock had put a pillow over his face to save Mrs. Hudson’s sanity. John almost grinned. He renewed his assault, slick hand all over Sherlock’s cock and mouth between his legs and a steady stroke at the deep, nerve-saturated place inside him, and through the pillow John could hear the desperate, unhinged sound of Sherlock’s cries.

At once Sherlock’s legs began to shake even harder and deep within John felt it all kick off.

Sherlock thickened and flushed and swelled, he tightened, he drew up, and with a pulsing series of contractions around John’s finger Sherlock began to come.

It was, at a word, magnificent. Sherlock cried out into the pillow and thrashed before the orgasm settled down into waves that John could feel with both hands even as he sucked hard into his perineum, drawing it out, keeping the sensation steady as Sherlock moaned over and over and over and curled his hips up in a reflexive movement of bliss.

Eventually, it receded, and John sat up and stared. Sherlock had dropped the pillow to the side again, and sweat dampened his hair across his forehead and temples. His eyes were closed. His mouth was slack. He grimaced and was taken by a massive aftershock that jerked his entire body and squeezed John’s finger inside him. 

His legs flopped open and John watched him pant for air, come spattered and striped down his torso. Sherlock blinked his eyes open but stared sightlessly into space. He looked destroyed.

“How are you doing?” John asked quietly, not wanting to damage the hushed atmosphere after the storm.

“Ngh.”

John grinned. “Good. Excellent.”

“Mmgn.”

“Happy Christmas.”

“You don’t—“ Sherlock swallowed. His eyes still stared into the middle distance, as if he hadn’t quite returned yet from wherever he’d gone. “You don’t have to sound so smug.”

“You’d be smug too if you just did what I did.”

After a breath, Sherlock groaned and pressed his palms over his face. “You are going to be unbearable.”

“Yes.”

“Give me…five minutes, and you’ll receive…retribution.” Sherlock appeared to be having trouble putting words into sentences. John couldn’t have been more proud. He moved his finger and Sherlock jerked around him. He groaned, and John pulled free.

Sherlock seemed to sink even further into the mattress. He blew out a shaking breath. John could not stop smiling. He settled down along Sherlock’s side, not touching him, not expecting Sherlock was going to be one for a cuddle. Sherlock surprised him by letting his arm flop to the side, over John’s ribs, a way to touch him by expending the least amount of energy possible, letting his sweat cool and his breath return.

“I love you so goddamn much,” John murmured.

Sherlock’s face stretched into a brilliant smile, for all that his eyes were closed again. “I’m not going to fall asleep,” he said. “I’m just…filing that. Away.”

“You have a room for orgasms?”

Sherlock rolled his head to look at him. “I have a room for you.”

John’s chest hurt. He smiled. “Ah.”

“I might have to build an annex.”

Laughing, John rolled off the bed and stretched the strain out of his back from contorting himself into such an awkward position.

“Where are you going?” Sherlock asked, actually sounding concerned. John knelt to kiss him gently.

“Washing up. I’ll be right back, I promise.”

“I have yet to retaliate.”

“Mmm-hmm,” John said, smirking, but he did have to adjust himself in his pyjamas before walking out to the bath.

When he came back Sherlock had cleaned himself off and was waiting with his hands behind his head and a smug expression.

“What?” John asked, concerned.

“Ready yourself.”

John rolled his eyes.

It was pleasant, obviously, to be stripped down to nothing, to let Sherlock run his mouth over whatever he saw fit, to see the eagerness in Sherlock’s eyes when he found the dewy dampness at the head of John’s cock, ready and waiting for his tongue. But pleasantness was transformed to brilliance when Sherlock began to use his mouth, slicking up the space between John’s legs and sucking on his balls.

As Sherlock wandered south, John gathered the words in his head. There was something he needed to say. But before he could even open his mouth, Sherlock stopped. “You dislike penetration.”

“Er.” John swallowed. “Yes. True.”

“And the rim?”

“That’s okay. I guess. It’s not really—“

With the flat of his tongue, Sherlock swiped a wide circle around the tender, sensitive skin. John’s toes curled. When he stopped, a garbled noise escaped John’s throat.

“I still can make you scream, John,” he said, as evil as John had ever heard him.

He grinned. Sherlock’s ego was broad and resilient and adored and familiar. “Prove it.”

It was, luckily for John, a perfectly fair assessment. It turned out that Sherlock’s mouth was good at something besides cutting remarks and tasting bits of crime scene when he thought John wasn’t looking, and his laser-sharp focus was excellent for noticing the reactions he was drawing from John’s body. He knew John so well—really _knew_ him—that he easily deduced the best way to drive John completely, absolutely, mind-numbingly wild. Several times he pulled John right to the edge of orgasm, spine and muscles drawn up tight, tissues flooded, primed and ready, then backed off, easing down into a slow plateau of bliss that left John panting and babbling and cursing his name. Each time Sherlock chuckled. _Smug indeed._

The last time, however, he didn’t stop. He sucked hard and fast, rolling John’s testicles in his palm, mounting pleasure on pleasure in a steady build that made John cry out on every breath and dig his fingers into Sherlock’s shoulder for stability. He couldn’t suck in enough air. It was too much. It was unstoppable. And just when he guessed Sherlock was going to back him down again, instead he knuckled up behind John’s balls and rolled his tongue against his frenulum and everything in the world spilled over into bliss. John felt the proprietary satisfaction of convulsing up into Sherlock’s mouth, hot and liquid and beautiful, curling his toes with the spasms, ecstasy loosening his joints and his tongue.

“Ohhh, that’s perfect. Oh god that’s perfect. Oh _fuck_. Oh god, I wanted to do that for so long. Oh fuck, yes.” He shivered as his nervous system settled, and he flopped back down to the bed. An aftershock made him twitch, and Sherlock licked up the last dregs of come that squeezed out, as if he couldn’t let a single drop go to waste.

Panting for air, John felt the sweat cool him for about ten seconds before Sherlock smothered him with his own body. John smiled and tried to hug him back.

“I’ve been thinking about that.”

John shivered. “Well. Er. Good.”

Sherlock settled his head on John’s shoulder. John carded his fingers through Sherlock’s hair and breathed, and together they lay there in silence while John came back to himself. Eventually he realised the tone of Sherlock’s quiet had changed. He looked down into his face. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“You’re conflicted.”

Sherlock’s gaze shot up and he focussed on John. “Why do you say that?”

“Because you are.” John kissed him on the forehead and Sherlock lay back down. “Speak.”

“This case shouldn’t have taken as long as it did.”

John tried to shrug, but Sherlock’s head was heavy. “Sometimes that happens.”

“I was sidetracked.”

“By? …Oh.”

“Exactly.”

“It’ll get easier.”

“I doubt it. I can’t simply lock things away, try as I might. It doesn’t work as well as it should.”

“That doesn’t exactly upset me.”

“It should.”

“Why?”

Sherlock sat up on one elbow. “If I can’t focus, I can’t work.”

“Sherlock. You haven’t been through this before, so believe me. It gets easier.”

For a moment, Sherlock studied his face. Then he settled back down on John’s shoulder.

They both lay there, solid in their own thoughts, before John eventually spoke. “I’m not sure how to write this case up.”

“Hm?”

“I don’t know if…I don’t know how to write it without talking about this—“ He squeezed around Sherlock’s back. “—and I think I shouldn’t.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“I might call it The Six Nap-A-Lodeons.”

Sherlock grimaced. “That’s horrible.”

John considered. “You’re right. I just don’t have a better title.”

“The Blue Cabochon?”

“Too obvious.”

“Well.” Sherlock nuzzled sleepily into John’s shoulder. “You don’t have to think of one right now.”

His lethargy was contagious. John yawned and used his foot to snag the duvet and pull it over them, then reached out and clicked off the bedside lamp. They were on the wrong sides of the bed. He didn’t care. “How are your blisters?”

“Fine.”

John pressed his face into his hair and breathed.

“John?”

“Mmm?”

“I was the couple at the b&b.”

John blinked. “Huh?”

“That reserved the room next door and never showed.”

When John realised what Sherlock was saying, he burst into laughter. “You manipulative twat.”

“It accomplished the goal.” Sherlock was smiling.

“This is how you rebuild trust?”

“Yes.”

“By tricking me.”

“By creating a situation in which we could sleep in the same bed, John.”

“Because you wanted me.”

“To distraction.”

When he put it like that, the irritation in John’s chest melted away. Clearly Sherlock had taken lessons from some horrid brand of romantic comedy, and he would have to be disabused of that wisdom just as he’d had to be instructed that heart rate is not a perfect indicator of love. This, though… John rolled over and pressed Sherlock back into the bed so he could nuzzle into his neck. It felt as though they’d turned a corner. Fumblings and mis-steps aside, Sherlock undoubtedly loved him. Relaxation rolled down John’s spine in spite of the subterfuge, in spite of the lingering concern about nightmares in which Sherlock was gone, in spite of the lasting hurt and anger. They would heal, given time. Meanwhile the tangle of awkwardness between them had a name and a face, and was steadily being unpicked the longer they lay against each other, stroking large expanses of skin and pressing lazy kisses wherever they could reach. Things were seldom simple, but the layers of complication were made a great deal easier by the way Sherlock curled his fingers against John and smelled his skin.

After many minutes of quiet Sherlock jerked his head up. “Ngh? John?” He must have dozed off.

John stroked his hair. “I’m here.”

With a mumble, Sherlock nestled back down against him and took a sleepy breath. John felt love in his chest so broad, so bright, it hurt. “Happy Christmas.”

John furrowed his brow and kissed the top of his head. “Thank you, Sherlock. Happy Christmas to you too.”


End file.
